


Moonlight Goddess

by Anonymouscosmos



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Headcanon, Minor Spoilers, Pining for Others, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Some Fluff, Tragedy, dead end romance, he gets bossy but we only write consent here, i get off on sadness, i make up some shit, it's fluffy smut. idk what else to say., its fine, noncanon, some smut, there is some mutual pining tempered by emotional unavailability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:22:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29127918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymouscosmos/pseuds/Anonymouscosmos
Summary: An over-elaborate telling to indulge my crush on Basim. Now with canon and headcanon content. In which OP goes down a long, dark tunnel and makes everyone miserable. Warning: This is a thirsty tragedy.-“What is the nature of these dreams?” She dares ask. Blood pounds in her ears. Has he abandoned all sense? Does he mean to kill her, here, on the soil they once shared as friends?“A goddess carved from moonlight comes to me,” he answers, and his voice is much closer. His breath fans the strands of hair that have escaped their braided prisons. “Lithe and powerful, with eyes as bright as a sunlit stream. She presses her lips to mine, and my world turns to ash. Night after night it is so, and I… Cannot seem to shake her cloying touch. Her scent clings to my skin like coriander and lavender. I find myself reluctant to wash it away.”
Relationships: Eivor & Basim Ibn Ishaq, Eivor/Basim Ibn Ishaq
Comments: 67
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

Sleep eludes her. Dark dreams nip at the edges of her rest like snarling hounds, and time and again she finds herself waking and coated in a thin sheen of sweat. In her dreams she hears the echoes of the Canterbury catacombs around her, and knows if she opens the box before her she will wish for a life without sight. She sees the earth at her feet, stained with Brothir’s blood. Her ears still hear Broder’s howl of anguish, echoing, as a shout is repeated mockingly by craggy stone walls. Sleep does not come to her, has not come to her, for several months now. Her axe swings are no less ferocious for the fatigue that plagues her, as Sigurd’s return to Ravensthorpe has proven. He might look at her with distrust and loathing, but he is safe. That is all that matters. The pain in her heart and the ache in her gut are agonies she will bear. They are nothing in light of all else she has faced on these Saxon shores.

On nights like this, her dreams are spangled with images of a man with dark eyes and long, black hair to rival hers. Unrest in her spirit always seems to usher him forth. _Basim._ She wonders if he is dead. Two weeks have passed since she set foot back in Ravensthorpe. Two weeks without any word from him. Rather than ride home alongside her, he bid her farewell and rode away in the opposite direction. And now… nothing. Even Hytham has expressed concern at his mentor’s absence… a fact that raises the hair on the back of her neck even now. When a Hidden One’s brow furrows, it is an ill omen at best.

She cannot say what she truly thinks. Not to Hytham, or Randvi. Certainly not to Sigurd. Many nights ago, under a moon as bright as polished silver, she found herself emboldened by mead and grief. She remembers it as clearly now as though it had happened seconds ago, rather than months ago. Her fingers beneath Basim’s chin, her eyes locked on his. She must have imagined the kindred heat kindled within those inky depths, for the moment her lips pressed to his he recoiled from her. A rabbit, skittering away from a striking viper. It was the first time she had ever seen the Hidden One’s seamless composure shaken, and she pulled away with a mumbled apology and cheeks flaming with shame. She had misread the signs, misheard his words.

_Are there none you find worthy to pass your time with?_

_A few. It is rare indeed, to find one whose company I so enjoy._

Words that, at the time they were spoken, warmed her. Basim, who’s mercurial temperament had long held her at bay, changed in their shared struggle to rescue Sigurd. They had grown close in those days… become friends, even, and now… It is her greatest fear that her offense is a grudge carried in his heart, driving him from Ravensthorpe. That she is responsible for his silence, or that his self-inflicted isolation from her has resulted in his death. 

These things and more churn in her mind, until she is sick from them and from the weariness they bring. She throws her furs aside after waking yet again. There will be no peace within her hugr this night. She throws a cloak over her shoulders, slips her feet into soft deerskin boots, and leaves the longhouse. Outside, the world is bathed by the light of the heavy and full moon in its sky-cradle. She gazes up at it, closing her eyes for a moment. Light that is empty and cold, like the leaden lump in her gut. A world without sun or warmth. She makes her way down the earthen path, worn by many feet through Ravensthorpe. She will go to the river. The river calms her on nights such as this.

A soft sound breaks the utter stillness of the evening, and she freezes. She has not forgotten the attack made long ago by Rued’s men, and her vigilant ears strain to detect the source of sound. There, again - a twig snapping, beneath the trees beside Rowan’s stable. She lowers herself into a crouch, moving forward silently. She makes no sound, save for the whisper of her axe leaving its loop at her belt. She has learned to be silent from Hytham, for while Basim seems to be drawn away from Ravensthorpe with increasing frequency, his younger apprentice has been eager to aid her in the pursuit of the order. Here, beneath the trees, there is little light. The dense foliage blocks out much of the moon’s rays, and she can see only shifting shadows and dapples of milky light. A loud snort startles her, and she freezes, but it is only a doe. The slender little deer erupts from a nearby patch of berry bushes and bounds off into the surrounding hills. 

Eivor chuckles, standing from her crouch and returning her axe to her belt. Her exhausted mind is playing tricks on her, if she is now mistaking deer for a Saxon incursion. Randvi’s scouts would have spied a trespasser long ago and sounded the alarm.

This time, when a twig snaps, she is slow to respond. Too slow. She feels herself hurtling forward, colliding with the thick trunk of a stalwart oak. Bark bites into her skin with surprising savagery, and she tastes metal in her mouth as she scores her own tongue with her teeth at the impact. 

_“Fuck,”_ she manages to utter, despite the wind being knocked from her. And then she goes completely still, for there is no mistaking the cold metal of a blade against her neck. The wielder makes no threats, only holds their blade still as another hand presses her to the tree with firm pressure between her shoulder blades.

_“Argr,”_ she hisses through her teeth. Her abraded skin stings where the rough bark continues to press into it. “Only a coward would strike from the shadows and take his enemy by surprise. Let me go and face me, that I might usher you to your god more quickly.”

“Hytham has been a negligent teacher,” a familiar voice says. “If he has sanctioned the following of a Hidden One. It is a sure path to a swift death.”

“Basim,” she breathes, conscious of the blade still threatening to slice through her skin at the merest movement. “Have you gone mad?”

“Perhaps,” he admits. She cannot see him out of her peripheral. He stands to the side, just out of her limited vision. “I have been plagued by terribly vivid dreams for weeks, now, and cannot shake them. I think they mean to drive me mad.”

“What is the nature of these dreams?” She dares ask. Blood pounds in her ears. Has he abandoned all sense? Does he mean to kill her, here, on the soil they once shared as friends?

“A goddess carved from moonlight comes to me,” he answers, and his voice is much closer. His breath fans the strands of hair that have escaped their braided prisons. “Lithe and powerful, with eyes as bright as a sunlit stream. She presses her lips to mine, and my world turns to ash. Night after night it is so, and I… Cannot seem to shake her cloying touch. Her scent clings to my skin like coriander and lavender. I find myself reluctant to wash it away.”

The pounding in her ears reaches a crescendo, and she can now feel it radiating to her fingertips and toes. She almost forgets the discomfort of the oak tree determined to become one with her flesh. _Is he… speaking of me? Of my unwanted advance?_

“If you are so keen to see this goddess of your dreams,” she answers carefully, “then perhaps you should not have driven her away when your lips first met.”

She waits for the blade to sever something vital. For the heat of hearts-blood to cascade down her chest in a crimson waterfall. No strike comes, though the blade maintains its position above her frantically throbbing pulse.

“The goddess would see me driven to ruin,” he says at length. “For my heart belongs to another, and has for many, many years. I did not - do not - wish to betray her, though she is so far from me now I have long since forgotten the sound of her voice.”

His voice is heavy and thick, as one mead-drunk or heartbroken might speak. Even in the dark, she knows there are no honey-waves upon his tongue. Only an anguish that matches her own.

“Perhaps the goddess was not asking for your heart,” she all but whispers her own confession into the night. “For you cannot be the only mortal who’s heartstrings are tangled in another’s fate. If you were to ask her, she might tell you that the ache in your chest is a shared one, and she sought only to lessen the pain of its grip.”

He chuckles at that, a soft chuffing sound. “A mortal indeed.” 

“If you do not intend to carve me like a suckling pig,” she ventures, “Then will you retract your blade? It is difficult to breathe with my own mortality dancing upon a blade’s edge.”

He seems to consider this, clucking his tongue thoughtfully. “And if I do not? If I would rather you held as perfectly still as you are now, that I might look at you?”

Heat, sudden and intense, unfurls in her gut like the blooming of mead within an empty stomach. “Then… you would only need ask it of me,” she manages to say.

He does not speak the request, but as the blade retracts with a soft _snick,_ he waits expectantly. It is a test. If she moves, then the promise - and the spell that seems to be cast over them both - will be broken. She does not move, save just enough to ease her scraped cheekbone from the tree’s unkind surface. When he sees her compliance, he makes an approving sound low in his throat. The pressure between her shoulder blades disappears with the withdrawal of his hand, and she takes a deep breath of the cool night air at last. She waits, palms still pressed defensively against the wide tree, and wills her body to be quiescent and still as the surface of a windless lake. She fights an urge to tremble. She, Eivor of the hungry Raven Clan, trembles for no one. Not even the dark-eyed man at her back who so recently held her life in his hands.

She flinches when two hands appear, one over each shoulder. Basim only laughs again, softer this time, as his fingers undo the clasp of her cloak. It falls from her shoulders, heavy and woolen, to pool at her feet. It is lost to the darkness, as is she. Beneath her cloak she wears only what she slept in - a thin tunic falling to mid-thigh and soft leather leggings. Basim’s hands skim over the surface of her tunic like curious birds reluctant to alight. She shivers involuntarily as they graze the flat planes of her stomach and hesitate over the stiffening peaks of her breasts. Night after night she has relived their kiss in her mind, tormented by what might have been. Now, she thinks she might find out, and it is entirely unnerving.

His right hand presses flat to her belly, spanning it with spread fingers. He kneads at her flesh and finds only unrelenting leanness. He makes another sound, one of pleasure, and then his hand is traveling down, down, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. The urge to tremble is becoming near impossible to suppress, even more so as his hand snakes its way down the laced front of her breeches. A tremulous sound escapes her, then, and too late she presses her lips tightly closed. Basim steps closer. Close enough she can feel the buckles of his waist belts and the heat of his skin against her cheek.

“Wolf-Kissed,” he says in a ragged whisper. “Tell me, do you enjoy this?”

Skillful fingers press against her, moving in languid circles made easy by her sudden slickness. A shudder passes through her in answer to his words, but it is not enough for him. He stills the delightful motion, nipping at her earlobe and eliciting a groan.

“I asked you a question, moon goddess.”

“Yes,” she gasps, involuntarily arching into him. “I enjoy it very much.”

He resumes his task, and as the tension coils low in her belly and she finds herself responding far too enthusiastically for her liking, she feels his other hand working at the laces of her breeches. As they come undone, her breeches begin to slide down her hips. She does nothing to stop them, far too enraptured by Basim’s insistent touch. Cool air touches her skin like a lover’s delicate advance, and it is delicious against her fever-hot skin.

“Step out of them,” he orders her, and from her haze she realizes he means her boots and breeches. He removes his hand, resting it on her right hip as she staggers while attempting to obey his command. When she has escaped the bonds of her leggings and boots, Basim kicks them out of the way with a sweep of his leg. She shivers now, but it is from anticipation rather than a true chill. There is nothing between her and Basim now save for her thin tunic. She is beginning to ache at the joining of her thighs, a near desperate need for him filling her. It has been far too long since she knew another’s touch, and his face has darkened all her recent dreams. 

Something cold nudges at her ankle, and she realizes it is the toe of his boot. She relents, and clutches the tree for support as he spreads her legs apart one at a time. There is a roughness borne of need to his nonverbal commands, now. Hands on her hips pull her back, forcing her to lower her grip on the tree until she is bent at the waist. When he has her positioned to his liking, his broad hands slide up under her tunic. He cups each of her breasts, savoring them with interested fingers. He pinches and rolls her nipples, and as she gasps and flexes beneath his touch he presses himself against her. A low growl escapes her at the impression of his arousal. He is truly a well-made man, and the urge to tremble wins out at last. 

“Do you want me, Wolf-Kissed?” He asks, sliding a hand down her taut stomach to again tease her. “Your body tells me yes, but I would hear it from you in the shape of words.”

“My body is a capable enough poet,” she answers through gritted teeth. “You should heed it.”

_“Eivor.”_ His tone is chiding, even as he slips first one and then a second finger inside of her. They rock within her, each sure stroke shattering another piece of her will. “I am as hungry for your words as I am your form. Loosen your tongue.”

“Ahh,” she half gasps, half moans at the invasion of callused digits. “Yes, damn you, I do. I’ve wanted you with every breath drawn since that night.”

“It will never be more than this,” he says with sudden severity. “My earlier words were spoken true.”

“As were mine,” she leans into his hand, the movement a plea to continue. “Speak no more of it. Show me what you wish of me.”

He needs no further urging. He withdraws his fingers, but the jingle of buckles silences whatever protests she might have made at their absence. Her legs tremble again, and she curses them softly for their unwillingness to obey. He hears her, and she can almost hear the smugness in his smile at his effect on her.

She is not made to wait long. When he presses himself to her again, it is not the feel of fabric and soft leather against her any longer. It is skin, bared and blazing hot against hers. She feels the swollen head of his cock nudging against her slick heat and she nearly cries with longing at the sensation. He is in no hurry as he rocks his hips, sliding back and forth against her. She fights the urge to draw her legs back together, to quell her knocking knees at the thickness of him. Even in the face of his own driving need, he toys with her. She can feel the sticky fluid of him against her folds, and he glories in her tiny mewls of protest as his hands grip her hips tighter and tighter. His restraint is crumbling as surely as her entire being is crumbling from the wanting of him.

“Basim, in the name of Odin, get on with it already,” she groans.

“Beg me, Wolf-Kissed,” he answers mildly, pulling back enough to press himself to her opening. When she attempts to arch into him, he laughs and holds her still with his hands. “Beg me,” he demands again.

She lets out a long, exasperated sigh. “Please, Basim.”

“Please...what?” He released one hip to drag a nail down the length of her spine. She shudders and her stomach muscles roll and coil at the shivering and gooseflesh his touch brings.

“Please fuck me,” she growls, beyond caring about the terms of the negotiation. 

“As you wish, dear one.” Words delivered glibly, and then there is pressure and the tender pain of being pinioned on far too large a spear as he fully seats himself in her. His hand, clapped over her mouth at the moment of entry, is all that keeps her cry of pleasure from being heard for miles beyond Ravensthorpe. Every muscle in her body is tensed from the shock of it, and she bites the inside of his fingers. He responds by slipping two of them into her mouth, and as he begins to move within her she sucks on them for the sake of distraction. Despite the roughness of his entry, he shows great care now as he fills her entirely and completely, over and over again. He rocks her back onto him with slow and careful movements, and it isn’t until his cock is dripping with her pleasure and she is well-fitted around him that he increases his pace.

He removes his fingers from her mouth, curving his hand around her jaw. He holds her face in his powerful grip, pulling her head back. Her spine curves, arching her further, and she feels him swell even larger in response to the added friction. As he begins to slam into her with an effort that feels almost more like rage than passion, she bites her lip or savaged tongue to hold back her cries. He is relentless in his movements, and each time he fully seats himself in her, her teeth creak from how tightly she is clenching them shut around her screams. She climaxes, fingernails biting into the bark of the tree as her body shudders and writhes beneath his onslaught. He does not slow down, does not grant her mercy. He makes demands of her body and takes them. Her legs have slowly made their way back together, and when he realizes this he again nudges them apart.

“No, no,” he says hoarsely, through a throat constricted by his own tension. “That will not do, sweet one.”

She can feel when he is finally nearing his own end. His cock throbs within her, swelling and pulsing. His strokes grow longer and more deliberate, each one ending with a hitch in his breathing. She is certain his grip will leave bruises on her flesh, he is gripping her so tightly. She encourages him, clenching around him with each thrust. He lets out a soft moan, then, burying himself deeply and holding in place. She feels him erupt inside her, the heat of it like molten metal poured into a mold. He twitches, fingers spasming where they hold her, as his release slowly pulses from him. She rocks her hips teasingly, and he groans and slams more firmly into her. She can feel his seed leaking from her, beading her swollen and aching lips with its sticky heat. He stays within her until the last of his own tremors have subsided, and only then does he withdraw. Again, she moves to right herself, but he stills her with a hand. He cups her with it, cradling the flesh he has just savaged. He spreads her open, slipping a finger inside her. When he is met by her soft moan and their mingled fluids, he adds another. She is panting, exhausted, but still shakes at the questing fingers. He adds a third, and she is already so stretched and swollen and tender she makes no protest.

Steadying himself with a hand on her left hip, he begins to fuck her with his fingers. The pads of his fingertips again find that spot where all heat and pleasure come from, and as his strokes increase in speed and demand, she again feels a climax building.

“Gods, but you are filled with me,” Basim says in a half-groan. “It is running down my fingers, even now.”

“Don’t...Stop…” she nearly sobs. “Please, gods, Basim, don’t… I…” 

And then she is shaking all over, and her knees are buckling, and it is only Basim’s strong grip that saves her from tumbling over. He laughs, his arm around her waist now as she bucks and strains against the rigors of her release.

When she has reached her end, he releases her - spreading her cloak upon the ground before helping her lower herself onto it. She lies on her back, mourning the lack of light as he carefully laces and buckles his gear back into place. She would give nearly anything to see what lies beneath the trappings of a Hidden One, but she understands his need to be unseen. This can only be temporary. He loves another, as he has said - and though she knows it is a path to ruin, she is in love with Sigurd. She can never love another.

Basim joins her, though he chooses to sit cross-legged where she must lie down and allow blood to return to her head.

“Are you well, Eivor? Was it… What you needed?”

“It was, and more.” Her cheeks heat, and she is no longer regretful of the dark. “I… That is, if you would ever have need of such succor again…”

“Your offer is kind,” he says gently, “But you are the sort of the woman I cannot trust myself to get close to. You are not the first strong-willed woman to bend my heart so. To know you in this way... would be to step off an edge I do not dare fall from. Hidden One or not, there are some leaps even I cannot survive.”

“I think that was perhaps a compliment,” she muses, “Shadowed as your words might be.”

“It is the highest praise I can offer,” he admits. “For impacting me thusly is not so easy a task.”

“What a pair we two are,” she says with a sad smile. “Two broken halves of something, mourning what we lost… Or may never have.”

“Some things are better this way,” he answers kindly. “What we yearn for is not always what is wise for us to take.”

“Will you stay with me?” She asks, unable to stop the words.

“For a time,” he agrees. And only then does he lie back on the cloak beside her, and in a surprising display of tenderness he pulls her to him. She curls into his side, feeling strangely at peace in the crook of his arm.

She sleeps, and for the first time in many months no dreams of death or ruin plague her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What am I even fucking doing at this point? Gods help me.
> 
> Have some emotional trash with your trash  
> \--

She is no fan of Saxon ale. It is weak and watery, though there is an acridity that burns at the back of her throat. But she has not come to this tavern for quality, but quantity. For peace she may purchase with silver coins. It might taste like Saxon piss, but it will serve its purpose. The ale warms her, sending tendrils of heat curling through her blood. There is a terrible emptiness in her gut, and she seeks to fill it with drink in the solitude of this corner she has found for herself. She takes another swig, grateful for the hood of her cloak that shields her from prying eyes. She would be alone, just now. Three days, she has slept in her rented room and drowned her sorrows in weak ale. Her clan believes she has ridden to Essex, and she allows the assumption. Let them think she is securing alliances, and not wallowing like a wounded animal. Wounded, indeed… for she has been cut into by Sigurd’s searing words and blazing eyes. By a dozen cruel jabs, the most recent of which is over Holger.

_A sad excuse for such a bold defiance. I hope you enjoyed it._

She drinks, and the memory of her own words in defense of him are still bitter on her tongue. A bitterness that leeches into the diluted Saxon swill, poisoning it’s taste further.

_Sigurd is our jarl. His word is law, whether or not you agree._

Better to be here, drunk and among strangers, than the home that no longer feels like such. At every turn she sees Sigurd, coiled and angry. The very sight of her seems to stoke his ire, and she quails beneath his gaze. She is sure the Sigurd she has known and loved for all her life is somewhere inside him still, but her faith is flagging in the long weeks following his rescue. She is adrift at sea, her sails torn, and to see him sitting alone in his dark thoughts or walking silently among their people only brings her pain. She has been left with an empty husk that walks like Sigurd and sounds like Sigurd, but is no longer Sigurd.

She has resisted her urges to reach out to Basim for comfort. It is beyond what she offered, and further still from what he is willing to give. Since that night beneath the trees, she has avoided him. To face him would be to admit how it has affected her. How rather than sating her yearning, it has only fanned the flames. He is in her blood, in the drumbeat against her ribs. More than desire stirs in her at the sight of the Hidden One, with his hair like a crow’s wing and those dark eyes that see straight through her... as though she were a spider’s web bathed in sunlight. Translucent and fragile. She wants more, and it unsettles her - for she has long thought only one might hold such a claim over her. She has taken many lovers over the years, but none have plagued her spirit like the shadow cast over it now.

Boots come into view, and she raises her lowered eyes to survey the Saxon who is standing before her, blocking the light of the hearth. Mud-covered boots and roughspun trousers. A tunic, covered in the grime of his trade, straining to encompass the burgeoning belly beneath it. Like most Saxons, he smells of unwashed skin and lank, unkempt hair. Mostly, he smells of pig shit. A farmer, then. When her roaming gaze reaches his face, he leers at her with broken and craggy teeth.

“What ‘ave we here?” The stranger booms. “A filthy stinkin’ pagan, come to drink our stores dry? Rumor has it you’ve been in ‘ere picklin’ yourself for days. No friends, pagan? Do you drink alone?”

She sets her tankard down, the ale little more than ash in her mouth. This is far more interesting. Already her body is responding, battle-fury humming through her with anticipation. She’s been spoiling for an excuse to split her knuckles, and here it stands… wrapped up neatly in soiled linen. She stands, drawing herself to full height before the large Saxon. He is taller than she, but not by much. And where he has the build of a man who is no stranger to work, she has the build of one who is no stranger to death. She angles her chin, that she might look down her nose at him despite the couple of inches he has over her.

“Turn around and go back to your piggies, little Saxon,” she says calmly. “I won’t warn you a second time.”

At the corners of her vision, she sees more shapes materialize. Her new friend is a coward, then, and has brought friends to aid him. She feels herself smile wickedly.

“This ‘ere is our tavern,'' the man sneers. “And you’ve spent enough time sappin’ our supplies. We’re here to see you find your way out of our town, be it on yer own two legs or on yer arse.”

She is surprised by how unsteady she feels, as the room about her tilts. Perhaps the Saxon ale is not so weak. Though if she had been drinking proper mead in equal measure, she’d be damn near dead from the amount of it. 

“You are welcome to try, my lord,” she answers mockingly, glancing down at his muddy boots once more. “Though you seem better suited to shoveling shit than fighting a vikingr.”

He swings, and his fist glances off her right ear as she ducks out of the way. She escapes the brunt of it, though her head rings like a bell from the impact of what he manages to land. She answers with a strike of her own, driving her fist into his ample gut with all the power she can muster. The air leaves him with the sound of a distressed bellows, and he falls to one knee. His friends are closing in. Three on one. Typical _argr_ seeking an unfair advantage. She drives her fist home again, and spittle flies as she impacts his jaw. The would-be hero spins away from her, falling heavily to the floor. Hands grip her arms, and she throws her head back. Her skull makes contact, and there is a grunt of pain as the Saxson holding her stumbles. The third man takes this moment to strike, punching her in the face once, twice. She feels her lip split against her teeth, tastes the coppery bite of her own blood. She grins and throws her head back a second time, twisting free as her captor’s nose shatters beneath the impact.

She stumbles forward, off-balance and bleeding. One Saxon unconscious at her feet, one mewling about his broken nose somewhere behind her, and the third looks uneasy as she spits a glob of spit and blood at his feet before advancing on him. Eyes wide, he draws a knife from his belt. It is a crude and cheap bit of metal - forged for function and not for beauty. She can see the brittleness of the iron, the warp of the blade.

“If it is a weapon you wish to use, then so be it.” She draws her axe from its loop, and firelight gleams off the perfectly sharpened edge.

She expects the Saxon to turn tail and flee. That is the usual response when faced by a large vikingr holding an axe. This one surprises her with the size of his shriveled Christian nuggets, for he swallows loudly and only holds his knife higher. It trembles in his shaking hands, and she grins even more widely. She doubts anything awaits him in the end. Certainly not his timid god with eyes only for treasure and self-denial, but she will usher him to his death all the same.

A fist drives into her right kidney, pain flaring white-hot from its center, and she stumbles on ale-addled feet before tripping over the large pig farmer still out cold. She rolls onto her back as soon as she lands, and sees the man with the broken nose has mustered his courage once more. He is holding a large clay pot over his head now, clearly meaning to smash it over her. Instead, it drops on him as a sleek silver knife appears from nowhere to embed itself in his temple. He falls like a heavy stone from a bridge, the clay pot breaking into shards over his head and shoulders. The third man loses all courage at last, looking over his shoulder at something before shouting in alarm and fleeing through the door on the other side of the tavern. 

Eivor groans, wiping at her chin with the back of her hand before attempting to regain her footing. A shadow falls over her, and a hand - sun-bronzed and callused - reaches down to aid her. She stared at it for a moment, her eyes unwilling to meet the face behind it. She focuses on the dark hair shadowing the backs of thick, strong fingers. How is he here? Is this a dream, as she sleeps off three day’s worth of ale?

“Take my hand, _ukhti.”_

She takes his hand, her tongue woolen and unmoving in her mouth. His eyes gleam like the sea’s waves at night, dark and tipped by moonlight. 

“Am I dreaming?” She asks stupidly.

“If you are, then so am I.” He offers an enigmatic smile. “You might want to offer the good tavernkeeper some coin, for his trouble.”

She turns to follow his line of vision, and sees the anxious man wringing his hands over the mess at her feet. She removes a small pouch from her belt, hefts it consideringly, then tosses it across the tavern. The man catches it with sudden deftness, eyes shining brightly at the weight of it.

“Perhaps you are… too generous,” Basim comments mildly.

“Am I?” She asks, stepping over the unconscious farmer and gesturing. “The smell alone is worth the coin.”

A hand takes hold of her elbow, and she realizes it is Basim’s and that she is swaying on her feet. Such a small thing should not stir the ache in her belly, but it does. The pressure of his fingers through the sleeve of her tunic is both too much and not enough, what she wants and does not dare take.

“I am fine,” she tells him, her words somewhat slurred by the thickness of her tongue. She tries to shrug him off, but the fingers are as unyielding as iron bands. “What are you… Why are you here? Did you follow me?”

“I was riding through on unrelated business,” he replies smoothly. “Imagine my surprise when I heard tales of a very drunk and angry vikingr causing a stir in the local tavern.”

“And you assumed it was me?” She does not veil the doubt in her voice, and he chuckles.

“Your raven perches atop the tavern, cawing at any who pass through its doors. There is only one vikingr I know with such a winged friend.”

She closes her eyes to cease the tavern’s spinning, and his fingers tighten on her elbow.

“You should sleep this off, Eivor. Your head will ache something fierce in the morning. Where is your room?”

“Down the hall,” she says thickly. “Last door.”

He does not wait for any protest, but guides her firmly by the elbow around the fallen Saxons and bits of clay pot. She is grateful for his presence, now, as the pain in her lip and kidney roar their protest at her movement. Were she sober, none of them might have laid a hand on her. She is made clumsy by drink and her scattered hugr. _Foolish drengr._

They cross the threshold into her room, and the door closes behind them with a soft _click_ of the latch. Unwilling to sit - for she knows if she does, she might not get up again - she leans against a roughly hewn wooden table. Cheap furniture for an overpriced room. The tavernkeeper has all but robbed her blind. Basim folds his arms over his chest and scrutinizes her with his piercing, hawk-like eyes.

“When I left Ravensthorpe, I was under the impression you had gone to Essex. I did not expect to find you here, so drenched in ale the floorboards beneath you grow drunk as well. What ails you, Wolf-Kissed?”

She passes a hand over her face, examining her savaged lip with careful fingers. “It does not matter. I… was road-weary. I decided to stop and rest.”

“One rests for a night, not several.” His voice prods at her. “Randvi told me of Sigurd’s words to you. If I were to guess, I would say they were the reason for your dark mood.”

“I... don’t know who he is anymore.” The words burst from her, unbidden. “It is as though the gods reached in and scooped out all that made him who he is. There is nothing left. He is not the man he once was. Not the man I - the man I sought to rescue,” she falters. 

Recognition flares in Basim’s eyes, for her words betray her. When he speaks again his tone is low, cautioning. 

“Eivor, be wary of your affections for him. They will only bring you pain, in the end.”

“You think I do not know that?” She laughs, a harsh and brittle sound. Steel, shattering ice. “It is a pain I am well-familiar with. As unending as a journey across Midgard’s sea with no wind for my sail. I thought… I thought England would bring us closer, but it has only created a divide between us I cannot bridge.”

He takes a step closer, and the movement is almost involuntary. As though he does not wish it, but his feet do not heed his will.

“There are a hundred others on this shore more deserving of your love,” he tells her in a surprisingly gentle voice. "Do not squander it on one who may never see you.”

“I did not know you cared so deeply about the wishes of my heart,” she sneers. “Until Sigurd was taken, you held me in poor regard. You twisted my words as you bent Sigurd’s ear. Tell me, Hidden One, why do you now feign compassion? Is this more intrigue, more tricks? Do you mean to bend me to your designs as you bent him?”

The accusation hangs on the air, ugly as the storm within her. She expects him to respond with anger, to see a fire light in his eyes - but he only shakes his head, spreading his hands wide.

“I can offer no excuse for myself,” he confesses. “Your brother and I shared a singular goal, and you were in our way. He and I were of the same mind in this, whatever my words. He knew you to be stubborn and fire-tempered, as much so as he. I fanned those flames, out of fear of you. Of your bond with him.”

“Deceiver,” she hisses. “Liar. _Bacraut._ You were the first crack, the one that lead to the divide I speak of.”

“I am,” he answers, though she sees little remorse in his eyes. “I am not a man who lets anything stand between me and what I must do. Not even you, Eivor.”

Her name is spoken like a caress. She falters in her anger at it, eyes searching his for something she might understand.

“Not even me?” She repeats. 

“Not even you,” he answers, taking another step closer. He unfolds his arms, allowing his hands to hang easily at his sides. She is not fooled by the causal gesture. He is coiled, a snake prepared to strike.

“You admit to lies and manipulations, and in the same breath expect me to believe I am more than another pawn for you to move about?” She scoffs.

“Would that you were only a pawn,” he breathes, and there is distress in it. A rope, pulled taut and prepared to snap. “You believe me to be the architect of Sigurd’s betrayal of you. Yet it is you who have made me betray myself.”

“Speak plainly, serpent-tongue,” she says through clenched teeth.

He closes the remaining distance between them with a swiftness borne of his chosen profession. He crashes into her, the table pressing into the backs of her thighs painfully as he claims her mouth with his. Beneath the force of his kiss, her injured lip burns and stings. She goes rigid beneath the onslaught, her mind fighting against her body for control. Her body is the victor, softening against him as her traitorous hands wrap about the nape of his neck and her fingers bury themselves in his long, dark hair. His hands clutch her waist and he grinds into her with enough force that her bones creak, and her lips part to welcome his demanding tongue. He tastes of clove, smells of it - a heady and exotic scent. Sharp and musky, like a lover’s honeyed skin. 

They part for a moment, and his face is that of a man who stands beneath his own gallows.

“I cannot wipe you from my thoughts,” he tells her, a hand coming up to cradle her face. His thumb traces the scar running the length of her face before coming to rest on her lower lip. He presses the pad of his thumb into it, and her eyes water. “That night, you and I… it was a mistake. It is a stain on my skin, that no amount of scrubbing will remove.”

“And yet you stain yourself further,” she says softly.

He chuckles darkly. “So I do. I have been both the betrayed and the betrayer in my life, and never before have I questioned myself… But you endanger everything I have striven for.”

“Then walk away.” Even as she speaks this challenge, her fingers twine deeper in the mass of dark hair amidst them. “Return to your strange shores, and never think of me again.”

His answer is a growl, and she gasps as his hand slides back to bury itself amidst her braids, tightening and pulling her head back. His mouth, hot as a burning brand, meets her neck and she shudders as his tongue tastes her skin. He moves lower, pressing heated kisses to her collarbone. When he can go no further without obstruction, he pauses long enough to remove her fur mantle and the belt about her waist. Impatient hands tug at her tunic, pulling it over her head and casting it aside. His eyes linger on her naked torso for a long moment, greedily drinking the sight in. There is candlelight here, far more light than the moonlit grove offered. His fingers trace delicate pathways along the runic tattoos spanning her belly, curving up over one breast. She shivers at the touch, and he smiles - lowering himself to his knees and dragging his lips with maddening slowness down her stomach as he makes his descent. The short, coarse hairs of his beard dragging over her skin send impulses of heat raging up through her belly, down her limbs. She makes a soft sound in her throat, unable to restrain it.

He unlaces her breeches as she buries her hands in his hair, clutching at him with each caress. He is being far more tender this time, and she regrets it. The tenderness pulls at the stitches that bind her together, threatening to undo her. It was easier, when she could not see him and he did not kiss her.

She steps out of her breeches at his urging, her breath hitching as his hand slides up the inside of one thigh. She likes the roughness of it against her skin, and when he bids her part her thighs for him, she does so eagerly. He slips his thumb into her, burying it to the knuckle. She forgets herself and bites her lip in pleasure, savoring the sudden pain that mingles with her enjoyment. He lowers his head, burying his face at the joining of her thighs. She utters a moan when his tongue parts her folds, lapping at her most sensitive part. As his tongue works against her, his thumb moves in and out. The sensation is overwhelming, and she tightens her fingers in his hair as her hips rock of their own accord. He continues this until her heartbeat is a deafening roar in her ears, and she is writhing and shuddering against him.

He stands when her own movements have stilled, and she can taste herself on his lips when he kisses her once more. His hands take hold of her thighs, lifting her with surprising ease and setting her atop the table at her back. She watches, breathless and heated by lust, as he begins to remove his own trappings. There is a surprising vulnerability to it. He does not lack in confidence, but his movements are guarded as his cloak and hauberk fall to the floor. Beneath it all, he is as heavily muscled as a drengr. Scars criss-cross his body, telling the saga of a man who has known both pain and many victories over death. When her eyes leave the sculpted flesh before her to focus again on the man, she sees this for what it is. It is a gift. A sight not often granted to others, and she is grateful for it. 

“I do not understand you,” she says as he pulls her close, to the edge of the table.

“In this moment… I do not understand myself,” he answers. “But you are all I think of, in every moment I am awake or dreaming. If I were a better man, I would deny myself this. I would leave you to pursue one who could give you more.”

“This is enough,” she tells him. It is a lie, but he accepts it. 

Her pained moan at his entry is muffled by his lips against hers, drowned by his seeking tongue curving about her own. Her hands roam down his waist until they settle over the divots of his lower back. She can feel his muscles bunch and release with each thrust, and she curls her fingers to dig into the meat of his back with each movement. Encouraged by her grasping hands, he buries himself in her so deeply she cries out. He presses two warning fingers against her lips, and she nips at them playfully. He laughs, a low and pleased sound, before replacing them with his mouth. There is no freneticism to this joining, no urgent need or relentless rhythm. He takes his time with her, each thrust deliberate and ending only when she cries out or moans or clutches at him for mercy. 

He wraps his arms around her, lifting her from the table and transitioning them to the bed. She mourns the moment he releases her from his hold, lowering her with the same strangely gentle strength. Soft furs meet her back, and as he buries his face in her neck he stills for a moment. He draws in a deep and shuddering breath, and the exhalation is cooling on her damp skin.

“Wildflowers,” he marvels. “Even now, you smell of them.”

“You are drunk from kissing me,” she scoffs gently.

“I am drunk from _you,”_ he admits, raising himself up on an elbow to look down at her. “But it is not ale that stirs me so.” 

He resumes his motion, then, and whatever words she might have for him are lost in waves of pleasure. He lifts each of her legs, placing her ankles on his shoulders. Her body tightens in delighted dread as he drives even deeper into her. One hand clutches her thigh, another her breast - and he increases his pace. This is more like the grove; punishment with pleasure. Her body shudders at the invasion, and she moans into the back of her hand. She is terrified he might split her in two, while also reveling in the idea of it. After their first joining, she was tender for days - unable to sit down without remembering how it felt to have him inside of her; the memory of it maddening her. His fingers tighten on her thigh, and his breath catches in his throat, stuttering. 

“Give it to me,” she tells him, reaching up to caress his face. “All of it. _Please, Basim.”_

The latter she adds, knowing his penchant for begging - and the light that gleams in his eyes at her words is proof of its effectiveness. With three more hard, jerking thrusts - he reaches his end. She can feel the burning heat of it, low in her belly. Feel the pulse of him as he fills her. He is panting, his bronze skin coated with a sheen of sweat. His hair is tousled from her greedy hands, hanging about his face. When he has regained some composure, he lowers his face to kiss the inside of her thigh. It is a gentle endearment, unspeakably tender, and again her eyes burn with something unsaid. He withdraws from her, allowing himself to fall back on the furs beside her. She struggles to rise, relishing the ache of her body in response, and when she takes him in her mouth he does not protest. A hand rests atop her head as she carefully licks him clean, his fingers spasming and his body tensing with enjoyment.

She does not have to ask him to stay this time, and he does not need to acquiesce. It is an unspoken agreement, now. He curls about her, framing her body with his. An arm encircles her waist, the hand cradling a breast. It is as though they have always known each other, and always slept thusly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have still more all-consuming trash... and some art I made, inspired by the last chapter

They have both failed as guardians of their hearts. He knows this as she knows this. Little by little they have stepped over every boundary set, brought down every wall barring the way to each other. They have sunken into the dark waters they vowed to avoid, and the current only pulls them deeper still. Each time they meet in secret, they promise themselves and each other it will be the last time. They are break-faiths, swept up in their self delusion - for the promises are never kept. Lies they whisper against honeyed lips each time they crash into each other once more. Waves, breaking upon great rocks that dwindle to stones, then pebbles, then sand… Until they rejoin the bulk of Ymir’s body. The smallest gestures, the simplest movements, are enough to rekindle the fire they cannot seem to stifle.

Eyes meeting across the feast hall, over the heads of oblivious clansmen. All it takes is one look. One glimpse of his dark amber eyes, fringed with thick charcoal lashes, and heat unfurls in her chest. It spreads to her fingertips, the ends of her toes, boils her blood and sets her body aflame. 

Knuckles brushing against hers in passing, the downy hair on her arm lifting in response.

Gazing at each other from across the campfire, the sounds of the drengr around them and the driving rain beating against the sailcloth strung over them for shelter fading away until there is only heat. Heat on her skin, in her chest, between her legs. Heat that is reflected in his own eyes, in his own desires, every second that passes until they can embrace once more a torment. 

Even to her own ears, their excuses to be away from Ravensthorpe begin to sound thin. He rides with her to East Anglia, to aid Oswald and Valdis in ousting a stubborn group of bandits from their lands. With Valis heavy with child and Broder gone to see to their brother’s final journey, the clan is stretched thin. There is no need for a Hidden One on such a sojourn, but she asks him to ride with her anyway. She imagines a dozen curious and calculating eyes fixed on their backs as their horses carry them away from the settlement. She does not imagine Sigurd’s eyes, hard and unfeeling, watching them go until the trees swallow them. His shape looms in the doorway of the longhouse, shoulders tight and tense, chin raised. He sees her without seeing her. A husk with two burning brands for eyes. If she were to allow it, the grief would swallow her like the current beneath the black waters of a storm-tossed sea.

“This is the last time,” she murmurs against her lover’s lips as furious wind beats against the sides of their tent, determined to rip the stakes they have set from the ground.

“Yes,” he agrees, but his hand on her hip only tightens, and his grip in her loosened hair only becomes more demanding as he pulls her closer to him. He presses her to his chest like a man afraid of losing something, and in the dark, she allows the corners of her mouth to lift.

  
  


When she must travel to Lincolnshire, he pretends he has business in the surrounding area. She tells herself she is only tired. That the fluttering of her heart against her ribcage is fatigue, and that she has not slept because the lump in her mattress bothered her. That must be it. Not dreams of twisting amongst furs beneath the dark and mercurial man who has embedded himself in her heart. Lodged there like one of his small silver knives, refusing to move, and she is unsure of how it happened. She finds herself suppressing the urge to smile - something she does increasingly less frequently the longer they live on these shores. She watches Basim tie the bedroll to the back of his horse’s saddle, and secure his saddlebags with nimble fingers. His eyes meet hers across the horse’s back, and there is similar denial in his eyes. Worry that mirrors hers. _What are we doing?_ He asks her silently, just as she asks him. But then a sly smirk slips over his face, his sleek and self-assured manner returning to him, and the presence in her heart burrows deeper.

-

“We can’t keep doing this,” she tells him mournfully, watching his tingers twist and twine about a lock of her hair contemplatively. 

He tilts his head to meet her eyes, presses a gentle kiss to the crest of her cheekbone. His fingers trail a wake of heat down her neck as they travel to the hollow of her throat, trace the line of her collarbone. A fingernail grazes her skin as he draws a line down between her breasts, to her navel. It halts there, drawing a repetitive circle. Gooseflesh rises to meet his touch, and he chuckles softly at it.

“I know,” he answers. “I know.”

It is silent, in this ruined tower. Only the rustle of birds perched on the broken rafters overhead break the stillness of it. She can feel the chill of stone through the cloaks laid beneath them. At least, she believes it is the cold of stone… and not the thought of this truly coming to an end that sucks all the warmth from her.

-

The seasons shift. The toothless bite of an English winter gives way to spring, and England blooms anew. The air is heavy with the heady perfume of all manner of flowers. Poppies nod their crimson heads in greeting as she rides past. Fields of lavender undulate like frothing sea-waves beneath the breeze. Sylvi crafts a crown of wilted daisies for Eivor, and when the girl thrusts it upward with wide and eager eyes, she cannot refuse the gift. She perches it precariously atop her head, and Sylvi beams widely enough that Eivor can see all three of the child’s newly missing teeth.

Ravensthorpe grows and profits with the new alliances and its burgeoning population. The branches of trees bow low beneath their burden of foliage and bounty, and Tekla experiments with apples and pears in her mead. The results are awe-inspiring, and Eivor spends nearly a full week soaked in mead. Lambs cavort in the fields of Saxon farmers, chasing each other on spindly legs. She is impressed by this verdant land, though she finds little contentment in it. There is a hollowness to her bones, and always a voice that whispers to her. It tells her she does not belong here, that she should be elsewhere. It presses at the edges of her consciousness until her head aches from stifling its demands to be heard. It is only silent when _he_ is near her.

-

Hytham receives a letter from their mysterious _Poor Fellow Soldier of Christ,_ urging her to visit Wessex and seek out a contact there. This, at least, is a believable enough cause to warrant a Hidden One’s presence - for Hytham does not so much as blink when Basim insists he come along. If it concerns eliminating more of the elusive order, his presence will be welcome.

They stop at the first abandoned farmhouse they find, kicking the door in together before laughing and spinning into each other’s greedy embraces. Each touch feels like the first felt in a hundred years, each kiss the first in a thousand. It is always this way, whether days or weeks or months separate them. She strips away his belts, his weapons, his cloak and hauberk. She wants more, _needs_ more, than mere portions of him. She is not alone in this driving hunger. She can feel it in the force behind his fingers as they grip her, the curve of his mouth when her fingertips brush over his sensitive ribs. She pushes him back onto the bed, her arms as yielding as stone, and he goes willingly. She sits astride him, rocks her hips, presses herself against him and shudders with anticipation at the friction between them. Her long and unruly hair forms a curtain of night about them, ensconcing them in darkness as their lips meet.

“This has to be the last time,” he whispers against her. His hand cradles her jaw as though it is crafted from the most fragile of glass, rather than made of steel and belonging to a blood-soaked vikingr.

“I know,” she answers, pressing her lips to his, silencing him once more. 

She needs no reminder. She does not belong to him, and he does not belong to her. And she will always have mere portions, nothing more, to be doled out in fits and bursts as fate allows. He fits to her like a piece that was always missing, a piece lost without her knowing. A piece which, now that she is aware of it, will ache like an axe lodged in her ribs when their time runs out. This cannot last forever. She knows this. Eventually, the ties that bind them will snap. He will return to his life and she hers. The knife in her heart buries itself deeper, twisting into the chambers of it, and she ignores the pain. Refuses to acknowledge it. She drowns herself in the man beneath her, solid and tangible, until the ache lessens. She can survive this. It is only another battle-wound, to be dressed and allowed to heal.

How many times over the past months has she lied to herself thusly? She can’t remember. She has lost count.

As though he senses the turmoil in her, his hand encircles her nape. He draws her back to him, forcing her to meet his gaze as he enters her. His eyes are gleaming, hungry, a wild thing determined to have its feast. She shudders as he slides into her, her walls constricting, her vision hazed with desire. Her belly aches with the wanting of him, and the simultaneous relief he brings.

“There is only you and I here, _habibata,”_ he tells her in a low and husky voice. “Nothing else. Let go.”

She does not know the meaning of the strange word, but it heats her blood all the same. She likes his native tongue. It is fluid, winding. It suits him. He shifts beneath her, driving up into her as his hands clutch tightly her about her waist. She forgets the thoughts that dog her steps and shadow her mind, giving herself over to the pleasure he gives her body and the strange comfort she finds in something so temporary. Her back arches as he fills her, her body aching and begging and quivering for more even as it quails at the punishment of his size and the strength of his thrusts.

He pulls her back down to him. He likes this, seeing her writhe as he pinions her. He enjoys her squirming, her trembling lip, her eyes blown out wide and dark in response to him. He likes to see her suffer, and as she cries out and begs for more he kisses her. His tongue explores her mouth, stifling her protests, until her screams are drowned by his demanding mouth. He releases her only when she grows close to her end, her heart stuttering wildly beneath her breastbone as her muscles tense and her breathing grows ragged. Her hands are on his chest, fingers carding through the thick, dark, curly hair spanning its breadth. She cants her hips, rolls them in tandem with his own movements, and he sucks her lower lip into his mouth and moans softly.

She shatters, breaking apart like a ship upon the rocks. She bucks against him, urging herself on until the waves of pleasure subside into pleasant ripples. She does not realize there are tears on her cheeks. Not until he reaches up and sweeps one away with the pad of a thumb, staring at it as though it is some foreign thing he has never seen before.

“Eivor?” Dark eyes capture hers, hold them in a fierce gaze.

“It is nothing. I am only tired.” She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the emotions that fill her, buzz at her like angry bees. She wipes at her cheeks, furious with herself, and manages to steady her voice. “Come, then. You have not finished. Is that not why we are here?”

Something in his gaze hardens. There is a flash of regret, of hurt. She feels shame at the realization that her willful callousness has wounded him, betrayed him. He makes a sound like a growl, pushing her off of him. The look on his face is nearly enough to bring tears to her eyes once more, but she is spared the continued humiliation of vulnerability when he turns her over. Strong hands on her hips raise her to her knees, and then a hand on the back of her head pushes her face down into the musty bedclothes.

“If that is all you want, then you shall have it,” he says as he pushes into her. The tenderness is gone, the intimacy of moments ago is ash in her mouth. He thrusts into her with the roughness of their first joining. His movements are brutal, relentless - and though she enjoys it, and her body responds with no less eagerness, she screws her eyes shut and stills her tongue. Her fingers curl into fists, twisting themselves into the rough blanket beneath her. Months ago, she would have preferred this. This… animalistic rutting, that serves only one purpose. But she has grown drunk on the sweetness of his lips, in the honey of his tongue. She had grown to yearn for more, beyond this. The gentle touches, the brush of his beard against her skin when he kisses her. She feels reduced. A mare, held by the halter to be fucked by a stallion. There is no joy in this.

The knife twists deeper.

She remains silent when he is done. For a long moment she stays where he has left her, her knees pushed apart and her face pressed into the bed. Her lungs expand with poisoned air, ribs cracking, heart pounding in her ears. She can feel the heat of his seed seeping from her, making her thighs slick. She turns onto her side only when she hears the rustle of fabric and leather, and sees he is already dressing himself once more.

_I am sorry,_ she wants to scream. _I did not mean those cruel words. Come back to me. I need this. I need us. Else I cannot survive._

_Perhaps it is better this way,_ another voice answers, slithering into her consciousness like an eel. _Is it not better to allow this to end? You need nothing. No one. You are the Wolf-Kissed, and your saga has no room for another._

He pulls the door open, the abused hinges screaming their protest. He does not look back over his shoulder, does not meet her eyes or offer one of his easy smiles for comfort. If he leaves, this will be the end. She is sure of it.

_“Wait.”_ The word slips from her throat unbidden, forced up from the depths of her spirit. He pauses, wide shoulders filling the doorway and blotting out the sun. If he leaves, it will never shine again. Ragnarok will come to her heart.

“I did not say what I did to hurt you,” she confesses. “Only to… protect myself. I know you love another, as do I. But I am terrified of this running its course. Of this fever-dream breaking. I have already lost... _everything.”_ Her voice breaks on the final word, and shame heats her cheeks as her eyes sting and burn with everything she leaves unsaid.

He sighs, and it is a lengthy and hollow sound. Wind, rustling through dried river reeds. She sees his shoulders sag in defeat, and he turns from the doorway with great reluctance.

“I was a fool to have drawn you into this.” His voice is kind, gentle. “For in all the ways I am shadowed, you are bright as the sun. It was unfair of me to pull you into darkness.”

A sob catches low in her throat, and she forces it down. “You once called me a goddess of moonlight. Just as the moon casts shadows, so, too, can it banish them. Let me banish your shadows, as you banish mine.”

_Love me. Choose me._

“This can have no end but a sorrowful one,” he breathes. His restraint is crumbling, she can feel the stones turning to sand beneath him. “The deeper we shovel, the harder it will be to climb out.”

“It is already impossible for me to climb out.” The words wrench from her as though she is a puppet and someone else idles the strings.

Silence stretches out between them; a sea without end. A river with too many twists and turns to tell if there is safe passage ahead, or a waterfall awaits her.

“My lover asks me: ‘What is the difference between me and the sky?’” He says at last. There is a tremble to his voice she has never heard before. A crack in the smooth armor. “The difference, my love, is that when you laugh… I forget about the sky.”

He turns fully from the door, then, stepping back into the dim light of this hovel they have claimed for themselves.

“Words written by another,” he tells her. “But they speak more truly than I have the ability for.”

“Then you will stay?” She asks, hardly trusting herself to breathe.

“For now, I will stay. As you say for yourself, so it is for me. It is impossible to climb out.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gore warning. This chapter is a bit graphic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are wondering how far-gone in this I am, I wrote a chapter entirely without smut. Not even kissing. Who am I even  
> \--

The landscape blurs beneath thundering hooves. She rides until her mare’s neck is slick with sweat and foam. Miles outside of the city, she can still hear the bells of Wincestre tolling their alarm. She is unsure of where Basim is. In the ensuing fracas of Aelfred’s betrayal, they were separated. She left the minster at a dead run, a horde of Saxon soldiers at her heels. There is nothing to do now but return home alone, and pray to the gods he is safe. No matter her aptitude with an axe; a city armed to the teeth with Saxon soldiers is a bridge she cannot cross without injury.

_ Injury. _

The searing pain in her back radiates through her once more. She had forgotten it, numbed by the surge of adrenaline as she urged her horse on through field and furrow, over hills and through the thick trees of a Wessex forest. It returns with a vengeance now, the arrowhead grinding against bone where it is buried deeply in her left shoulder. Gritting her teeth, she reaches back with her right hand and seizes the arrow shaft. One hard yank, and it is pulled free. She grunts in suppressed agony as it comes free, inspecting the glittering steel point that gleams in the late afternoon light. She tosses it aside, feeling suddenly weak and boneless. She has lost a great amount of blood. Her saddle is wet with it beneath her, her tunic and cloak clinging to her skin. She cannot ride home in this condition. Ravensthorpe is a week’s journey from here, and it will be a full day of riding - sunrise to sunset - before she is clear of this hostile territory. She knows she doesn’t have long. She must find somewhere she can rest, clean herself, hopefully cauterize the wound. On the morrow she will ride out once more, and if she is lucky, rejoin Basim.

She is gentler with her horse, now that danger is far enough behind them that they might walk rather than gallop. The chestnut’s head hangs low with exhaustion as Eivor guides her through the trees, eyes wary of danger and on the lookout for somewhere she might settle in for the night. She spies a farmhouse in the distance. Rather than risk being seen, she pulls up some distance off and ties her mare to a nearby tree. Her legs tremble in protest as she crouches low, approaching the farm in stealth. As she draws near, she sees her caution is unneeded. Bandits have been through here long before her. Slaughtered livestock litter the ground at her feet. Chickens, pigs, a large cow with its hide settling and sinking into its bones. All left to rot in the sun, wasted. Killed for the fun of it, for sport. There is no honor in such a slaughter. To waste such bounty given by the gods is a crime only the Christ-loving Saxons would commit.

She pulls a corner of her cloak over her nose upon entering the house. There is a great hole in the roof, from where the thatch caught light and burned briefly before guttering out. The good farmer remains where he died, a sword piercing him and buried deeply into the floorboards beneath his body. One arm is outstretched, grooves clawed in the wood beneath his broken fingernails. Even as he lay dying, choking on his own blood, he reached for her. His wife. She is still abed, skirts pushed up around her knees and her legs discolored by settled and clotted blood. They died badly, this man and his wife. He twisted in agony upon the floor as she lived her own last moments of terror. Cold washes over her despite the warm night. She is no stranger to death, but this manner of slaughter only brings bitterness to her tongue. If one must kill, then it is better to do it swiftly. To prolong suffering is to demean oneself. Such deaths are the fare of men like Kjotve. Soldiers fall in battle knowing they go to their gods - or  _ god _ \- but this is the act of murderers and thieves. Not drengr. 

She is aching, bleeding, covered in sweat and dust. Still, she will not leave these people to this terrible rest. She begins with the farmer, pulling the rusted sword free of his carapace and tossing it aside. She takes hold of his ankles, praying his boots stay on, and drags him from the farmhouse. He leaves a wide smear of blood and fluids behind him, his body bloated in death. This must have happened three or four days past, she decides. She has seen enough corpses to know the signs. His eyes are white, milky, staring. She cannot understand why, but the sight of them sends a chill up her spine. When she has pulled him clear of the house, she rolls him over with the toe of her boot, that the ghostly eyes might look to the earth rather than her face.

The farmer’s wife is easier to move, being of a diminutive stature and far lighter. Eivor folds the heavy woolen blanket over the dead woman, rolling her up carefully until she is fully shrouded in it. She takes hold of the edges of the blanket and heaves, gasping at fresh pain blooming around her injury. Fresh blood seeps down her back with the effort.  _ Almost done,  _ she tells herself.  _ Soon, you may rest. But not yet. _

She leaves the woman beside her husband. She does not have the strength to dig them graves, or pile a cairn over them. All she can offer them is this respite in the charred remains of the garden they once tended. If their god is listening, she hopes he welcomes them into a feast hall where they might find some small amount of peace in death. Their last moments in Midgard were a living nightmare. She stares at their still forms for a long moment, her breathing ragged. The sun is dipping below the hills, daylight rapidly fading with its descent. She must light the hearth and clear the empty home before she can no longer see her hand before her face. It will be a moonless night; the sort that is so dark even candles flicker with worry.

_ Why has this affected me so?  _ She asks herself, as she opens the shutters to the farmhouse in the hopes a breeze might clear the fetid air. The stink of rot and destruction hangs heavily about her, filling her lungs and burning her eyes.  _ I have seen more dead than the gates of Helheim, and yet this Saxon farmer and his wife claw at my insides with the sharp talons of loss. I mourn them, though I do not know them. _

_ Because he has weakened you,  _ a voice hisses from the recesses of her mind.  _ To love someone is to divide yourself, to split your body and your spirit. You have divided yourself between being a drengr and being a woman. Between glory and love. You cannot have both. _

_ I am no less able to swing my axe,  _ she sneers in reply.  _ Torment me no longer, greybeard. I do not seek your advice. _

_ You diminish yourself further each time you allow him to lay his hands on you. You would weave flower chains to bedeck his hair, clad yourself in fine gowns, and forget your destiny. Foolish girl. A child, playing at being a warrior.  _

“I said be silent!” She thunders aloud. No answer comes. No retort, or oily words poured into her ear. Odin grows as silent as the farmhouse, and when she is sure he is gone once more, she sets to work.

The hearth crackles merrily, its ill-placed cheer bathing the house. She lights several thick tallow candles, placing them at the center of the scuffed wooden table. She considers eating, but her stomach roils at the thought. She can still taste death on her tongue, still smell it in the air. Anything she eats will only taste of rot and ruin, and so she removes her cloak instead. Her strength is waning. The effort of shrugging off the fur-lined mantle leaves her breathless, struggling to air. She wrestles with her tunic. It is both wet and clinging to her as well as stiff with dried blood in places. She twists and wiggles, her left arm numb at the shoulder, but eventually it comes free. She lets it fall to the floor, kicking it away.

She reaches back with her right hand, fingers inspecting the wound. Already, it is hot to the touch. Tender in a way no fresh wound should be. It concerns her. It would heal best with stitches, but she cannot reach and there are no healers in Wessex that would help her. One look at her tattoos and the axe on her belt and they would either flee or cry for soldiers to come to their aid. No, she is alone in this. She will clean the wound the best she can, sear it with a brand, and hope it will hold through the night.

She wipes away the blood and grime with a cloth dipped in boiling well-water. The heat of it is welcome against her aching flesh. It is the next part she dreads. She pulls the iron poker from where it rests amidst the coals. It glows hot, hungry for her continued pain. She grips it tightly, closing her eyes and biting down on the leather strap of a belt. She has done this before, but in better circumstances. Times when she was not so weary or weak from loss of blood. Even now, she sways in place on the teetering wooden stool. Steeling herself, muttering a curse, she reaches back and presses the brand to the wound in her shoulder.

White-hot agony flares through her. She jerks despite her best efforts to restrain herself, but holds the iron in place long enough that it does its work. It is the smell of burned flesh that undoes her. It fills her nostrils, and she is suddenly grateful for her empty stomach as it convulses in protest. Darkness throbs at the edge of her vision. Her heart pounds in her ears. Loud, too loud. It is deafening. She drops the iron, staggers to her feet, and promptly falls forward like a felled oak. The last thing she sees is the great swath of blood left by the farmer’s body, stretching out from beneath her and staining the floorboards.

-

She does not know how long she has slept. She wakes, and the farmhouse is dark. The hearth has grown cold, and the roof leaks as rain patters against the ruined thatch. Her lips are cracked, split, and she is hot. She is damp with sweat despite the cool night air. She licks at her lips, and finds her tongue is dry and woolen. She is parched, wants water. _Needs_ water. She has never been so thirsty. Her body aches with the wanting of it, screams at her to respond to its desires. She tries to lift herself, but she is weak and exhausted and  _ hot.  _ Her left arm is numb save for her fingertips, which tingle in alarm.  Sweat trickles down her neck from where it beads beneath her thick braids. 

_ You will die here. A nameless drengr in this Saxon land. You will not be remembered for your battle-craft, but for your overly soft heart. Eivor the Wolf-Kissed, died after giving last rites to Christian farmers. _

“Is there no end to your prattle?” The words are dry, desiccated, croaking forth from the throat of a corpse.

_ If you would only heed my words, I would guide you to glory,  _ the voice seethes.  _ Why do you insist upon stumbling through this life? _

_ Because it is mine to stumble through.  _

And because she is too weak to rise from the floor, and too tired to seek water, she sleeps again. She sleeps, and sees a great archway before her. An archway she has seen before, in a vision two winters past. Beyond it, Odin waits, a great wolf at his side. She turns away from the archway, ignoring his cry of warning, and finds herself facing a stranger. She knows him, but he is not himself. It is the eyes she recognizes. Dark as the heart of amber, twin embers burning in their depths as he meets her gaze. She reaches out, places her hands on his chest. His fingers curl about her wrists. He pushes her back, freeing himself of her touch.

_ I know you,  _ she whispers.  _ Don’t I? _

_ Wake up, habibata,  _ he tells her, though his lips do not move.  _ You must wake.  _

The dark waters of Helheim rise beneath her, lapping first at her boots, then her knees. She is alone, now, fingers twitching as the waters reach her hips, her chest. She thrashes her arms as ripples nudge at her collarbone, but her boots are fixed in place. She cannot move her feet, cannot kick her legs. The water is at her chin, and she must tilt her head back in order to gasp for more air. And then the black water closes over her head, and it is cold. Colder than the harshest winter she has ever known, and in her shock she opens her mouth. Black water pours down her throat, fills her lungs. She screams, but there are none to hear her. Bubbles rise to the surface. The last of her life, fleeing her.

_ You must wake. _

She wakes, gasping and spluttering. There is no archway, no strange man with familiar eyes. There are no fathomless waters seeking to drown her. There is a hand beneath her head, a ladle held to her lips. A shape looms over her, fuzzy and indistinct. Her mouth is filled with a foul liquid, and she coughs and chokes as it burns its way down.

“Drink, sweet one,” a voice commands. It is not the harsh and unfeeling voice of the all-father, but another. One she knows and welcomes. 

“Basim?” She blinks rapidly, and as she does the shape takes solid form. She is still in the farmhouse, though she is no longer on the floor. She is lying on the bed, and he is crouched beside her. He holds the ladle up, urging her to drink, and she shakes her head.

“It tastes like pigshit and burns like fire,” she protests weakly.

He sighs. “My dear, if you were in better condition, I might question your knowledge on the subject. But if you do not drink this, the fever and infection may take you. Drink, while you have the strength remaining to do so.”

“I saw you,” she whispers, thoughts still muddy and confused. “In my dreams. But you were… different. And somehow the same.”

He visibly stiffens at her words, as though she has struck him. His eyes lock on hers, and for a moment she almost fears what she sees within them. She quails before it, and then his shoulders soften and he is her Hidden One once more. Again, he nudges the ladle against her lips. 

“The fever is speaking for you, no doubt. Drink, or I will not be so gentle in my urging.”

She feels mead-drunk, though she knows it is the fever that burns through her blood. She is dizzy, light, her skin heated as though she has slept too close to a roaring hearth. Whatever his strange concoction, she will drink it. She trusts him, and there are small few she affords such a gift. She has found only betrayal on these shores. She drinks, fighting the bile that rises in response. When the ladle is empty and she closes her eyes in disgust, he chuckles softly.

“When I was a very young child, my mother would add honey. It soothed the bite of the yarrow. It was the only way I would willingly drink. I was as stubborn as you, then.” He smiles at the memory.

“You are not stubborn now?” She asks thickly, her head clouded.

“I am fortunate you are so bad at hiding your trail,” he says, ignoring her barb. She watches as he dips a cloth in water, wringing it out before placing it upon her forehead. It is cool, soothing. She could moan with relief. “If not for that, I might not have found you in time. Your wound is infected.”

“Fucking Saxons,” she manages to say. “Aelfred wanted me to… to accept his Christian god. I declined his generosity.”

“I gathered, from the army you brought down on both of us.” He looks at her, and the affectionate warmth in his eyes makes her fever burn all the hotter. “I was greatly relieved to find you alive, though in poor condition.”

“You have a strange ability,” her words are slurring, and she realizes the strange brew is affecting her. Numbing and soothing the pain of her body, and loosening her tongue. “Of finding me when I need you most.”

“You do not need me, brave spirit,” he chides gently. “You need no one.”

“No,” she shakes her head, and it is as though she floats in a lake of mead. Thick and sweet and buoyant. “I need you, always. For what is a moon without its sky-cradle of darkness?”

She giggles, languid in her newfound freedom from pain. 

Basim rocks back on his heels, forearms resting on his knees. She can see his reluctance, the shadows in his eyes. Each time she pulls, he resists - pushing her away, stepping just out of her reach. He is hers, but will never be hers. No matter how encompassing her need for him, or his for her. His skin is a rich golden-bronze in the low light, his dark hair in disarray. Tousled, tangled, come loose from its binding. As though he has lost all care for it, in his urgency to tend to her. Hesitant though he is, guarded though he may be, she is sure the spark she feels within her chest is mirrored in his own. 

“You are beautiful,” she tells him, in a sudden burst of remedy-induced honesty. She did not think it possible for her face to grow hotter, but her cheeks heat like the bosom of Muspelheim all the same.

“You are not well, brave little Wolf-Kissed.” He places a hand atop her head, soothing her damp forehead with his thumb. “Sleep, now, and when you wake again you will find some strength returned.”

A soft sigh escapes her lips. The sigh of defeat, and exhaustion. She allows her body to slacken, closes her eyes, and slips in waters no less dark but with the chill gone from them.

-

Twice, he rouses her from strange and meandering dreams to drink the foul brew. With each waking, she feels the shake in her limbs subside a little more. The fire that scorches her skin lessens. Poultices draw the poison from her wound, and the swollen, tormented flesh loses its heat and begins to mend. As able as he is in his dealing of death, he is equally adept at healing. He moves her this way and that as he tends to her, his tone brooking no argument, though his hands are ever gentle. He tells her three days have passed since he found her lying in a puddle of Saxon filth. Three days that have felt like the full turn of a season.

“I have never had such a sudden fever,” she says as he removes the poultice from her wound.

“I would guess the Saxons tipped their arrows with a toxin,” he decides. “King Aelfred took no chances in ensuring you did not leave his borders alive. It would seem he very nearly accomplished that goal.”

His fingertips on her back are cool, comforting. As much the touch of a lover as a caregiver. She luxuriates in the sensation of them. When his work is done, he helps her turn onto her side. He does not leave immediately, but remains sitting on the edge of the bed. There is a faraway look in his eyes, as though he bears a wound of equal gravity. A wound she cannot see, but can feel. 

“Tell me of the one you love,” she asks softly. Her fingers reach out to him, beseeching, and he does not twist away. He allows her fingertips to brush over his knuckles, before she laces her own fingers with his. “The one who keeps your heart.”

“You should not hear of such things. Not now. You are feverish, sick, and do not know what you are asking of me.” 

Her voice changes in pitch, almost wheedling. Her ears recoil at the pathetic sound. “You know my secret. You know the truth of my own despair. We are imbalanced in this.”

“You wish to know of the woman I love?” He repeats, sudden ferocity hardening his eyes and sharpening his voice. “You truly wish to know of this?”

“Yes,” she whispers, in a voice so small even Ratatoskr would strain to hear it.

He is silent for a long moment, staring at their twined fingers as though a serpent is wrapped about his wrist, poised to strike.

“She is very beautiful,” he answers. “Her face and form matched only by the sharpness of her mind. No matter how dark my world grew, she would find a way to bring light to my heart again. All my life, I was surrounded by false friends. By those who named me brother, but in the same breath would see all I had stripped away. They did not care for me. They cared only for the mask I wore. A mask they all wore, with gladness in their hearts. She was the only one I could trust. The only one I could be my true self with. Who would sacrifice everything for me, without hesitation, should I need it. And I… would do the same for her. A thousandfold over.”

“She sounds like a woman worthy of loving.”

“Yes.” He closes his eyes, brows furrowing with remembered pain. “She was.”

She does not miss the shift in tense, or the way his fingers curl about hers tighter still. She remembers his words so long ago, when she asked after his family. His son, taken from him. All his family dead. He told her he had no one, nothing, and until this moment she did not understand. Not truly. The woman he loves, the reason he fought so hard against the pull of this bond between them, is lost to him. Lost in the way his son is lost. He does not love a woman of flesh and blood, but the memory of one. Just as she loves the memory of a man, who exists no longer.

_ “Basim,” _ she murmurs, her heart suddenly aching terribly.

“Time seems to stretch on without end, in her absence,” he confesses. “I have sailed the black seas of nonbeing, and found only the echoes of a life once lived. I cannot remember the sound of her voice, or the way she smelled. I cannot remember what it was like to be touched by her. All I have are… descriptions of memories. Words, rather than the impressions of sensation. They are diluted still further by….this. By you. How can I see the sky, when the sun is so bright it blinds me?”

Guilt sinks its fangs into her, deeply enough to chip against bone. “I... am sorry. I did not mean for this to take something so precious from you.”

“Do not apologize,” he answers with a shake of his head. “I do not believe there was ever truly a choice, where you are concerned. The current of this river was always meant to drown me. Curses be upon me, I go to it willingly.”

The words hang in the air like glimmering strands between them, drawing them closer still. Something catches in her chest, a spark that becomes an inferno, burning her world to ash.

“I do not know what gods you worship,” she is hesitant, seeking to bring him comfort but fearing she will only pain him further. “But… perhaps, when you have reached the end of this life, you will see her again.”

His eyes lift from their joined hands to meet her gaze, and conviction flares in them. “Of that, wise drengr, I have no doubt.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's jealousy, possessiveness, bossiness, and emotional mess ahead. If that's not your cup of tea, I'd skip the second half of this chapter.
> 
> *crafts far more story than necessary*
> 
> \--------------------------

A shadow falls over her where she is crouched, and she does not look up. She recognizes the shadow, the fall of his boots. She would know him anywhere, for they have fought and bled and laughed alongside each other for many winters. She continues to cup water in her palms, washing the dried blood and muck from her arms. She has spent the morning hunting, and it was a less than successful venture. The boar sow she stumbled upon was not quick to die, and the shrill scream of her horse as a tusk tore its belly open is still fresh in her ears. Leagues from Ravensthorpe and with no other choice, she put the animal out of its misery once the boar had been dealt with, and walked the long and dusty road home. Now, she wants nothing more than to be left alone with her dark mood. Naturally, he chooses this moment to open his mouth after so long a silence. He has not spoken to her in months, with the exception of the barest possible words. A jarl as mute as he is ill-tempered. He has not spoken to anyone, in truth. She is no longer special to him. Not favored. Not his Wolf-Kissed, nor his sister, nor his stone-arm. She is nothing. The absence of all affection has torn through her like a hundred spear points. 

“Are you injured?”

She jerks her head up at the words, finding the sun bright in her eyes. She lifts a dripping hand, shields herself against the sunlight streaming over his shoulders and blinding her. Months of leaving her to wallow in a pit of despair, and now he would ask after her well-being? Fury jumps in her chest, an ugly toad startled from its murky pond.

“The blood is not mine,” she mutters, lowering both her hand and her eyes. She finds herself suddenly adverse to meeting his gaze. To look at him would be to renew the ache that has only recently begun to subside from a deafening spear-din to the dull throb of a half-healed axe wound.

Silence. He shifts uneasily, and at the fringe of her vision she sees his boots sinking into river mud. A king come down from his castle to gaze upon his thrall, lowering himself to her. Her heart thuds, a dull and incessant and beseeching rhythm. It threatens to break free of its cage, to go crawling to him through the bloodied water and over the mossy bank. To kneel at his feet and kiss his ankles, clutching at him and begging for his love.

_ Be still,  _ she scolds the treacherous thing. 

“I… know I have not been myself, these past weeks.” His voice is hesitant, soft. The timbre of it broken by uncertainty. 

_ He is afraid to speak to me,  _ she realizes.  _ Afraid my tongue will curl and lash like a whip. Perhaps it will.  _

“These past  _ months,” _ she corrects him. “A few more, and it would be a full winter.” 

She stands, shaking water from her fingertips. The droplets glitter in the daylight like diamonds, before arcing through the air and returning to the brook that made them. She is able to meet his eyes, and so she does. Let him see the anger and the hurt and the betrayal in them. Let him see the scars from the wounds he has carved into her. If it means his silence will return, then so be it. She has held her tongue, bitten down on it until it bled and filled her mouth with its taste of copper. She will hold it no longer.

“What have I done to deserve such an abandonment?” She demands. “To cause you to turn from me? Have I not always been at your side? I left Norway without so much as holding a breath, because you asked it of me. I have ridden to every end of England, and gathered allies in your name. I have watched over your people, guarded your wife, because you gave them over to my care. I have dwelled in the darkness of your shadow all my life, content, for to stand within its shade was to be close to you. It is… It is all I have ever wanted.”

The truth of her feelings pours from her like a split and poisoned wound. As hot and fevered and ugly as the scar on her back once was.

“You have been ill-used,” Sigurd answers, and she sees that he is tired. Not tired as a man who has spent a restless night tossing and turning, but tired in a way that is unknown to her. A man who has not known peace for three turns of season. Who has grappled with something fathomless and terrible, and even now is losing the silent war.

He raises his hand, runs it over the top of his head in a gesture that is familiar. That is entirely him. It is a mannerism she has seen a hundred times, on a dozen different shores, and there is something about it that tugs at her. That brings a remembrance to the surface she has fought to bury, for the sake of her own survival. There is a bitter taste in her mouth; the chalk of betrayal heavy on her tongue. This thing that bobs to the surface like an empty barrel is familiar, too, for it exists already within her heart. For another.

“I have no excuse for it,” he continues. “I… lost myself, for a time.  _ Am _ losing myself. Do you remember the great summer storm that set the longhouse alight? You were young, then. Perhaps eleven winters.”

“I remember it,” she answers, her voice wooden. “The one that cracked the great stone at the mountain peak?”

“Yes,” he nods. “The very same. I am… like that stone. Two halves, cleaved in two as neatly as two slices of bread - yet held together by something, still. Unable to truly break apart. Unable to separate myself from the broken pieces of myself. I… do not know how else to explain it. Do you understand my meaning?”

She considers his words. She can see the shape of them, and believes she understands. She remembers the day she returned home to Ravensthorpe following his rescue, and thinking the man she found seated in his chair was not _her_ Sigurd but another. The fury in his eyes, the darkening of his brow, his cutting words slicing through her like the sharpest of blades… none of it was the Sigurd she knew and remembered. It was as though he had been replaced. Changed. She speaks slowly, hesitantly.

“I know that… your time with Fulke unlocked something within you. You spoke of being a god reborn. This… god, that has awoken. He is there, within your hugr, as are you?”

He looks relieved by her words. His shoulders sag, and the lines at the corners of his eyes deepen. Lines that were not there two winters ago, when this world was new and their path to glory stretched out before them.

“Yes,” he breathes. “In a sense. It is hard to describe. At times, he is a voice that whispers guidance to me. In other times, it is as though he is… pushing me, pressing against me. And I am afraid. Afraid that if I relax, if I falter, if I bow beneath the weight of it - the two halves of the stone will separate at last, and it will be my half that tumbles down the mountainside. Not his.”

She can hardly breathe for the fluttering, twisting, coiling sensation in her belly. As though she has become Aella’s serpent pit itself, and the vipers are striking at her from the inside, filling her blood with their venom. She knows of what he speaks, for she has often felt the same. Her visions of Odin leave her fumbling, confused. He questions her every decision, argues against them. He whispers to her from the shadows of her mind, and she cannot help but feel as though she is clay and he means to shape her into… something other than herself. Her skin grows clammy at the thought, her brow suddenly fevered, and Sigurd does not miss her unconscious reaction.

“Eivor,” he says, his voice troubled. “Are you well?”

She shakes her thoughts from herself, shedding their smothering cloak. “Yes, as… Well as I can be. Why have you taken so long to share these thoughts? Why leave me to fathom out your strange moods in the darkness?”

“I have spent these past months unsure of where I end and  _ he _ begins,” he confesses. “Nothing is certain or clear anymore. My temper has been a torch, flaring and dimming beneath the whims of a heavy rain. Even now, I struggle to temper its flame. I do not trust myself.”

She lowers her gaze, then. Lets it fall on her own mud-covered boots. On the insects that skim the water at her feet, their brief contacts sending ripples over the surface. The world about her hums with warmth and new life, and she… Feels cold, and empty. She has lost something, over the great divide that has increased in depth and yaw between them. There was a time she could not imagine her saga without him, thinking their fates forever entwined. And now she fears him. Fears allowing herself to find what was lost, to repair it, lest it be broken again. Once, she might survive. A leg might be broken, and if it is cared for strength will return to it. Twice broken, the limb will never be the same. Weak and bent, just as that of Tanngnjóstr, Thor’s mighty goat. Once the marrow has been spilled, there can be only lameness.

“I ask nothing of you that is not willfully given, Eivor,” he continues. “But if you find it in your heart to forgive me, I will be grateful for a gift so undeserved.”

She manages to nod despite the roaring of the sea in her ears, her head dipping in a clumsy assent.

“I thank you for your honesty,” she tells him. “But I will need time to dwell on your words.”

“It is more than I had hoped for.” 

He stands before her in silence for a long moment. He is taller than her by a full head, broader than she by equal measure - and yet he seems small, diminished. Frail and alone. The shadow he casts is far taller and more proud than the man who stands in the mud. A cracked stone, teetering, his fate uncertain. She suddenly yearns to reach out, to clasp his hand in her own two. To pull him to her and press him to her chest, holding him there until he finds his way again. But she cannot, does not. Not yet. The threads of fate wrap tightly about her, binding her, and when she meets his blue eyes again she sees only brown. Just as Valka foretold, she has betrayed him. Her heart has committed the treachery, and she would follow it.

“There is more.” She can sense the reluctance in him, see the words struggling to form themselves in the bobbing movement of his throat. “Tell me.”

“I wish to return to Norway.”

She blinks.  _ Norway? After all this time in England?  _

“The clan has only just settled,” she tilts her head, wondering. “To return would be to live under Harald’s thumb. They will not be pleased with the request.”

“Not the clan,” he shakes his head. “Only myself. And you, if you are willing.”

“Sigurd, what dark business would lure you back to the land we left? I do not know which half of the stone is asking this of me.”

“Both of them,” he answers truthfully. “It is time I realized my great destiny. I wish to make one final journey, but first… I would see my father, and bid him farewell. I do not wish to do this alone. Will you come?”

She sucks in a long breath, holds it.  _ I am with you until the end, Sigurd. From here, to Valhalla. This is my vow.  _

“I made an oath to you,” she speaks haltingly. “Many winters ago, when we were young and the future hung bright in our eyes. I will honor that oath. It is ironclad. If you would return to Norway, I will be at your side.”

Something returns to his eyes at her words. Hope, relief. A sadness so absolute she must turn away from it, lest it prick at her eyes and steal her composure.

She waits until he has turned and gone, until the silhouette of him disappears amongst the trees. When she is alone once more, she dips her hands back into the stream and splashes her face with the cool water. Her cheeks are heated, her ears tipped with warmth. Her chest rises and falls of its own accord, shuddering. She will not cry, refuses to cry. She has shed more tears in the past winter than she has in all her life, and she struggles to maintain a hold on herself. England seeks to put an end to her, either in body or spirit, and in this moment only her body is safe.

-

Rain drums on the roof of the longhouse. For three days it has rained, and the sea roils and churns with it, barring their leaving. She sits cross-legged on her bed, fingers carefully braiding the still-damp length of her hair. Thor strikes his anvil and she pauses in her work, for the shape of a man is silhouetted in her doorframe. She did not hear the door open, did not see him appear, until the lightning heralded him. There is only one man who moves so silently, and as she takes in the lines of him her heartbeat threatens to outdo the crashing thunder overhead.

He closes the door behind himself. He moves with controlled anger, his eyes dark and his hair dripping rainwater. He is without his armor, clad instead in a simple white tunic and leather breeches that cling to his tawny skin. It is unlike him to be so disrobed and unadorned. He looks as though he has been woken by ill tidings, his face a mask of fury. She stares at him, frightened by the chill in his gaze, her fingers forgetting their task.

“When did you plan to tell me of your plans to return to Norway?” He demands, his tone harsh and guttural.

“Our leaving has been delayed,” she says by way of explanation. “If you did not notice on your walk up the muddy hill, it is not a favorable time to leave.”

“Do not dance around me with words,” Basim growls. “Did you truly intend to tell me? Have you forgotten me so easily, with Sigurd’s good graces again heaped upon you like a cape of poisonous flowers? Did his apology make your knees tremble? Will you now fall to your knees before him and profess your undying love?”

A cold lump forms in her belly. She allows her hands to fall into her lap, her shoulders tightening in anger.

“Were you eavesdropping? Did you listen in on us from the shadows, sly and stealthy as a fox?”

“He shows you his true nature, and rather than having the sense to run… you welcome him with open arms?” Fire burns in the depths of his dark eyes, and he paces back and forth before her bed. “You do not know him as I do, Eivor. He would sell you to a slaver to buy himself a loaf of bread. That is what you are to him. A means to his ends. It has always been so.”

“You do not know him as I do.” Her cheeks burn. “You have known him only a handful of winters. I have known him all my life. He is not as you say.”

“I see many things you do not,” he shakes his head. “You are blinded by love for him. He will use you and cast you aside once more. It is his way.”

She slides off her bed, striding across the distance between them. She stops a foot away from him, chin raised, eyes flashing her own fury.

“You know nothing about him,” she snaps. “As you know nothing about me.”

“Oh?” His hand flashes out, and she flinches, but too late. He seizes her chin in hard, unforgiving fingers. She attempts to twist away, but he holds her fast. “I know you, Wolf-Kissed. And I know you are  _ mine.”  _

Thunder cracks once more, and she can feel the force of it vibrating through the floorboards beneath her bare feet.

“I belong to no one.” Even to her ears, the protest is without spine.

He wrenches her closer, until their noses are nearly touching and she can smell the cloves upon his breath and the dampness of his skin.

“If you do not belong to me,” he breathes in a mock-tender whisper, “Then why do you tremble beneath my hand? Why do you burn for me, even now, in the face of your rage?”

His words strike true, for her legs shake beneath her at the proximity of him. This close, she can remember the sweet and desperate heat of his mouth and the motion of his powerful body against hers. Beneath her thin nightshirt, her nipples stiffen and form aching peaks. His lips twist into a cruel smile, and only when she is still and the fight has left the tendons in her neck does he release her from his grip.

His eyes travel over her trembling form, lingering over the outline of her breasts. They pause when they reach the half-finished braid, interest kindling within them.

“Your hair,” he says thickly. “Unbraid it.”

“Get out of my room,” she answers, fists clenching.

“I said unbraid it,” he repeats, each word clipped and concise. It is as much a plea as it is a demand, however callous his tone may be. He outstretches a hand, and her body refuses her command to shy away from it. He cups one breast, palming the weight of it, and runs his thumb over the sensitive tip.

Slowly, in a dreamlike state, her hand lifts and begins to work her tresses free from the thick braid. He watches silently as she obeys his wish, her fingers combing through the tresses as black as the night itself. 

_ “Basim,” _ she groans softly, as he pinches and rolls her nipple through the thin shift. “Not here. Not with him so close. He will hear.”

“That,  _ eaziziun, _ is precisely why it must be here.” He steps closer, pulling her tightly against him. “If you do not wish to be heard, then you will have to be quiet. And I will not make it easy for you to be silent.”

“Leave,” she pleads once more, unraveling still further at his touch.

His voice is husky, almost sweet, against the shell of her ear. “If you truly wish me to leave, then step away from me. Be it an inch, a foot, or stride. Do this, and I will go. But if you do not, then you surrender yourself to whatever may come.”

His arm about her waist loosens invitingly. Her stomach clenches and unclenches, the muscles in her legs flex and go still. She does not shift. She does not breathe. She is rooted in place like Yggdrasil, unable to move from where she is planted. After several endless moments, he lets out a low and breathy chuckle. His hands slide up the length of her body knowingly, reacquainting themselves with paths well-traveled. They stop at her neckline, hesitating, pondering. She trembles, her mouth dry with anticipation. When the next bolt of thunder splits the sky, he seizes two fistfuls of nightshirt and tears it asunder. She gasps in shock, both at the force of it and the sudden chill of air against her exposed skin. He laughs again, the same dark chuckle, and slides the remnants of garment from her shoulders. It pools at her feet like spilled moonlight.

He slips a hand between her legs, and as he explores her she keeps her eyes fixed on his defiantly. 

“I have only just arrived, and already you long for me.” He withdraws his hand with a satisfied expression, and she can see his fingers shining with her wetness. He opens his mouth, licking each one clean. A shiver runs through her at the sight, and she is remembering the way it feels to have his face between her legs and his hot, slick tongue lapping at her. The tiniest sound escapes her throat, and his smile widens.

He turns her around, facing her away from him. She waits breathlessly for his next move, and is surprised when she feels his hands bury themselves in her hair. His breath catches in his throat as he marvels at the length and weight of it. His fingers comb through the waves, following them to where they brush against her lower back. She allows herself a small, smug smile of her own. Whatever his bravado, her effect on  _ him  _ is no less. A fact proven further when he pulls her against him once more, and she can feel the hard length of him against her. She curves her spine, arching into him teasingly, and he growls at her. Smoothing her hair to fall over one shoulder, he nips at the nape of her neck. A thrill runs through her as his teeth score her skin, and suddenly she is aching. Aching so badly her knees press together for the desperation in it.

He turns her back to face him once more, and when he presses her down to her knees she goes willingly. She watches as he unlaces his breeches, pulling himself free of the constraining clothing. He angles her head back, just enough that he can look into her eyes, and presses the head of his cock against her lips. Obediently, the fight having long since left her, she opens her mouth and takes in as much as she can handle. His thickness alone makes her jaw ache, and when he begins to rock his hips and fuck her throat she nearly chokes. His hand weaves itself in her hair, tightening, unwilling to let her retreat. He drives into her mouth until tears leak from her eyes, but she remains stubborn and refuses to plead for mercy. It is he who breaks first, holding her head still and taking several long, ragged breaths before withdrawing. 

“Get on the bed,” he tells her, his voice strained. Silently, she obeys. Unsure of what he means to do, she sits on the foot of it and waits, hands folded in her lap. 

He kneels before her, gazing up at her darkly before parting her legs. He pushes them apart until she feels almost ashamed of how open and vulnerable she is. If anyone were to walk in, if anyone were to hear a sound and investigate… the thought terrifies her even as she shivers pleasantly in response to it. 

“Yes,” he whispers. “Imagine if he were to walk in, and saw me doing  _ this.” _

He slips two fingers inside her, crooked just enough that they immediately find the place that makes her quake and tremble. He takes a nipple in his mouth, gently at first, tracing circles around it with the tip of his tongue. She feels secure in her ability to remain silent. She will not betray herself, will not be made to face the shame of her tryst being known. Her confidence fades when he begins to fuck her with his fingers at an incredible speed. His fingers move in and out of her in a frenzied rhythm, and as she bites her tongue to keep her silence, he bites and sucks at her nipple.

It is almost enough to shatter her. Almost enough to draw his name from her throat. Tension builds low in her abdomen as he continues, muscles twitching and tightening beneath his clever touch. She screws her eyes shut, focuses on her breathing, tries to think of something, anything but this… but her body has a will of its own, and she cannot escape this moment.

He stops at the first tremor, going immediately still at the first shuddering of her walls as they clench around his fingers. Her eyes fly open, her mouth parts in shock. He only smiles up at her wickedly, dark eyes gleaming.

“Tell me,  _ habibata,”  _ he croons softly, withdrawing his fingers. “Are you mine?”

“I belong to no one,” she seethes in answer, flustered and aching even worse than before.

“Ah,” he says, as though disappointed. A ruse. He is enjoying himself. 

He stands, leaving her furious and unfulfilled, and joins her on the bed. He lies back, head resting on her pillow, and pulls her onto him. Again, he faces her towards the door - bidding her sit astride him backwards. A low moan flees her throat as she begins to lower herself onto him. Even with his fingers entering her first, her tender flesh protests the size of him. She means to go slowly, gently, but he grabs hold of her hips and pulls her down onto him roughly. She bites the heel of her thumb at the sweet agony of it, and the swell of his cock in answer to her pain tells her he enjoys this. She leans forward, hair falling about her in a protective curtain, hands splayed on the bedspread. He sits up part way, seizing her by her hair, and pulls her head back until her spine is curved and there is no more hiding. He spreads his legs wider, forcing her own thighs apart. Again, she is bared. On display. His treasure, his property, his  _ claim... _ laid out for any to see who might enter.

She wants to hate him, wants to rage against him. She tells herself she wishes she had taken a step back, forcing him to honor his words… but that would be a lie. She is weary of lies. Lies told to herself, to others, to him. There can be no more hiding.

When he has her where he wants her, he fucks up into her. In this position, spread open as she is, body curved back, she thinks each plunge might kill her. A sword, thrust up through her body and impaling her heart. She presses a hand to herself, low on her belly, and moans again. She can feel his cock inside her, moving within her, filling her and stretching her wider still. 

“Are you mine?” He asks again, rocking her hips back and forth with his free hand.

“I, ahhh, I…” she stumbles, stammers. Shadows move beyond her door, and she prays to the gods it is only her wolf, Mouse, pacing restlessly... and not a man. The last man she would have see her this way.

His grip tightens in her hair, demanding her attention. He increases his pace, and her hand quests lower. Her fingers slip over her wet and swollen folds, searching until she finds the base of his swollen cock. He is drenched beneath her, and she can feel herself wrapped about his thick shaft. 

“Fuck,” she breathes, unable to still her tongue.

Again, heat begins to build within her. She feels herself tightening, throbbing and aching and desperate for some kind of release. He immediately slows, reducing his efforts to a maddening undulation.

_ “Please,” _ she whispers. 

“You know what I wish to hear.”

The sea roars in her ears, and her body shakes and quivers over him. Again, shadows move beyond the door. She can see them, long and narrow, cast by candlelight. Gods, has she been silent? Has her loud breathing and piteous sounds given her away? There is only one way to be done with this. Only one way to end it. She does not understand her own reluctance at them, for they are only words. They cannot bind her like robes, cannot chain her as shackles could. Three words, and she may have her release and her freedom.

“I am yours,” she says so softly it might be lost to the wind outside.

“Louder,” he demands, slowing still further. 

She raises her voice a fraction more. “I am yours.”

“Louder still, dear one, precious one, beautiful one. Goddess of moonlight.” His voice is a hiss in the darkness at her back, and it gives him away - for he is hanging on to his own resolve by an unraveling thread. “That all might hear, and know. That this, and you, belong to me.”

Her eyes flutter again to the shadows beyond her door, her heart constricting with fear. Under her, the Hidden One writhes - not just within her body, but in her spirit. Beneath her skin, a thing that has burrowed too deeply to be removed. And even if she could remove it…remove  _ him _ ... she knows she would not make that choice. She is here because she wishes to be. Because as much as this hurts her, as much as this threatens to turn the fine cracks spidering across her spirit into chasms as she breaks apart, she needs this. This pain is one sweet and slow as cold honey, poured over her and enveloping her in an agonizingly unhurried curtain. It soothes the burns of her past agonies even as it smothers her.

In a soft, hoarse, broken voice - she cries his name, as loud as she dares. She tells the cool night air upon her skin and the shadows at the threshold of her door that she is his, that she belongs to him, to  _ Basim Ibn Ishaq. _ The gods grant her pity where her lover will not, and Thor’s next strike upon his anvil drowns her voice in its wrath. Something deep within her breaks, snaps. Distressed longship planks shattering upon rocks. Ice beneath her feet cracking apart, plunging her into a frigid abyss. 

_ Gods, what have I done? _

He follows her to her sobbing end, her body shuddering with gratitude as his final plunges bring him to his own relief. When it is done and he allows her to collapse, he scoops her up into his arms, cradles her to his chest with a gentleness she did not know he possessed. He wipes the tears from her cheeks, soothes the hair from her damp forehead, and wraps her up tightly in an embrace. She feels the soft press of his lips to her forehead, a hand at the back of her head cradling, guiding,  _ holding.  _

“Do not follow him to Norway,” he says, and his voice is ragged and pleading and so filled with sadness she pulls back just enough that she can meet his eyes. “You will find only death, there. Death and continued heartache.”

“I must go,” she insists. “I made an oath to him and I mean to keep it.”

“Your oaths mean nothing to him.” His arms tighten further. Possessive, protective. “In all the ways you are clear-minded in your honesty, he is clouded by the urge for deceit. Any vows made to you will be twisted to the precipice of breaking. He will lead you down the path to ruin, and should it require a sacrifice, he will throw you into the fire. Stay here, sweet one. Where you are safe and loved.”

_ Loved.  _ She cannot help but wonder if the word includes his own feelings. He almost said it, so many weeks ago.

_ The difference, my love, is that when you laugh… I forget about the sky. _

The confident, self-assured man of minutes ago is gone, the anger that darkened his eyes leaving him like a gust of wind. The man that holds her now, that rocks her against him and clings to her as though the thought of losing her is a hot blade in his belly… This is the true Basim. The one she has grown to love, despite her struggling against it like a fish in a net. It is as though she has known him all her life, his shape familiar to her fingertips and his voice a song she knows but cannot remember the words to. She has never felt so utterly loved and completely hated.

_ Foolish drengr, _ the familiar voice sneers, returning in strength once the door has shut behind Basim and she is alone.  _ You have let a wolf into your bed. A wolf that will be our end. _

_ _


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more prolonged suffering for our enjoyment

The rain relents after a full week of Thor exacting his rage. Each time she blinks up into the sheet of sky-tears, she wonders when his wrath will dwindle and the sun be returned to them. When the clouds part at long last, it is to reveal a sodden land of mud. The drengr sleeping by the docks, driven out by the swollen waters, return to their lodging and seek to repair the damage done.

_We would never have such trouble in Norway,_ Randvi complains when Eivor nudges a large dead fish out the barracks doors with her boot. _In Norway, the water has the decency to freeze before it might flood._

Basim has been conspicuously absent since the night in her room. When asked, Hytham only shrugs in bewilderment.

_I do not know, Eivor,_ he tells her. _Of late, he speaks his mind to me less and less. He is preoccupied, distracted. Withdrawn. He seems to dread something, though I cannot say what. I worry for him._

She only tightens her jaw, squares her shoulders, and renews her focus on the task at hand. There is a long voyage to prepare for, when Ravensthorpe is secured once more. She immerses herself in the doing. She replaces warped boards or missing planks, smoothes over the small ravines carved into the earthen pathways. She helps Gormund scoop the rainwater out of the longboats, where they sit low in the water. She is surprised to see Sigurd emerge from the solitude of his room. He delegates tasks, even helps where he is able. He is no less guarded, his eyes and tongue without warmth, but it is more than any of them have seen of their jarl in months.

Nine days pass, and at last the eve of their trip to Norway is at hand. The ship is ready, the crew prepared. Supplies have been loaded and secured beneath oilskin wrappings. There is still no sign of Basim, and she tells herself it does not matter. Whatever lies unresolved between them, it will wait until her return. They have been apart before, but never with such a sour note hanging between them. She denies the tumult she feels, the ache in her belly that has stabbed at her like a dull knife since he left her side, abandoning her to a dark room and still-darker thoughts. And yet, her eyes dart up at the smallest sound. Her fingers twitch at the approach of boots or the slamming of a door. She wanders the pathways of Ravensthorpe until she thinks she might drive herself mad, and decides to remove herself from it. She retrieves her bow and her horse, riding off into the countryside. She will hunt, and the whistling of the birds and the smell of damp earth will calm her spirit, as they always have.

The rains have resulted in a beautiful sight. Flowers of every shape and color rise up from the grass, their perfume heavy on the air. Deer graze on the lush undergrowth, watching the silent vikingr from a distance with their large brown eyes framed by thick lashes. The world smells new, full of life. And somehow… It feels empty as a tomb. 

It is late afternoon when she finishes her hunt. She retrieves her mare from where the animal crops at grass contentedly. Over the buzzing insects and the chirping birds, the wind rustling the wildflowers and her horse’s rhythmic chewing, she hears something. Or perhaps she senses it. The fine hairs at the back of her neck lift as they always do when he is near. An unconscious greeting, perhaps. Or a warning. Gladess rises in her heart unbidden, followed by the fluttering of a dozen winged things in her belly.

“You are growing careless,” she says aloud, securing the rabbits to her saddle with a leather cord. “There was a time you could sneak up on me, but now I hear you as clearly as a birdsong.”

She hears the rustling of leaves in answer, before Basim steps out from amidst the trees fringing the clearing.

“If I did not wish for you to hear me, you would not,” he answers.

“Perhaps,” she grins, eyes flicking to the sky. “But _she_ would tell me.”

High overhead, Synin swoops and dives, chasing a stray starling in a mad plummet towards the ground. Sun flashes off her raven’s obsidian wingfeathers.

“I believe that could be considered cheating,” Basim says chidingly, stepping closer. “Hidden Ones must rely on _their_ senses alone.”

He stands close to her mare’s head, smoothing the sleek hide of the chestnut’s neck. Though his movements speak of ease and he is not without his usual slyness, there is darkness in his eyes. He is troubled.

“How fortunate I am no Hidden One, then,” she answers wryly. “Did you come to steal my horse? Or do you wish to speak to me? What brings you to stalk me in my forests, sly one?”

“She is a fine horse, but it is her master I seek to confide in.” A smile touches his lips as he lifts his gaze to meet hers.

“Then speak, lover,” she presses gently. “For my day’s bounty grows cold and stiff as I wait.”

“I wish to express my regret,” he confesses hesitantly. “I know you mean to set sail on the morrow, and I do not wish you to leave with things as they are between us.”

“And what way is that?” She asks, though she knows. The memory of that night in the longhouse is still painted over her skin in fading blooms of saffron and plum; marks where he clutched her savagely in his overwhelming anger and passion. No matter the soft words he presses to her lips, there is an emptiness that comes with her feelings for him. A mead horn, tipped on its side, honey-waves spilled upon the ground. Only a memory of sweetness remaining. Never enough to satisfy or soothe an aching heart.

“My behavior towards you… It was undeserved. I have no excuse for it. I pushed you, and it is my greatest fear that it was in a way you did not wish for.”

She considers his words, resting her hand on the mare’s sun-warmed flank. 

“At times… I think I understand you. There is a kindness to you, a tenderness in your gestures and words. It is for this, I am drawn to you time and again. Why I cannot seem to escape the threads that bind me to you. A man who, like me, has lost everything… and uses that pain to strengthen himself, rather than allow it to shape him.”

She can’t look at him. She focuses on the stitching of her saddle, on the bloodied fur of her day’s catch.

“And then there are times when… that man is gone, and a stranger inhabits his skin. Wearing him like a fur mantle, hiding what truly lies beneath. A man who seeks to destroy me from within. A sharp knife, cutting away at the meat of my ribs from the inside. When _he_ looks at me, I feel… Small. Alone. Afraid of not only him, but the darker feelings he stirs within me. This stranger makes me feel as though I… have earned the suffering at his hands. As though I have wronged him, and he seeks vengeance even as he cares for me. I do not enjoy this side of you. It leaves me shaken, unsteady. I feel as though I have been twisted by dark seidr, and the goodness in you is only an illusion.”

“You are right to feel this way,” he says. “And more precise than you know. In a way, there _are_ two sides to me. There is the man I was before. The part of me that is the Hidden One. Calm, sure of his goal, steady of hand and heart. And there is the man who is shaped by all he has lost, broken by pain. He looks at the world and sees only the grave of all his hopes. Where you had Sigurd to guide you through this life, to lean on… I had no one. No brother to fight alongside me, or see my thirst for vengeance quenched. Betrayed by my oldest friend, my life a crumbling ruin. This is the side of me that is… furious. Consumed. Unable to move past the memory of what I once had.”

He does not move to touch her, only continues to stroke her horse’s neck.

“When I look at you… I am split between two views. I see all that I do not have, all that was taken from me. An unbreakable bond that anchors you. A love that you might reach out and take, should you wish it. I do not have these luxuries, and for this I resent you. I envy you. I wish to see them turn to ash, as mine have. This is the ugliness you see in me. The darkness that would steal your light.”

“And the other?” She asks in a low voice. 

He sighs softly, leaning his forehead against the shining neck beside his flattened hand, and closes his eyes.

“I see a woman who would steal the stars from my sky and the warmth from my sun, and in the wake of such a theft I would welcome the darkness.”

There is a reluctance in him. As though he is speaking in half-truths. Telling her only portions of a story. The portions that are safe to tell. She can see how badly he wants to share more. There have been times where she thought the veil of mystery surrounding him had been nearly pulled back entirely. She has come so close to knowing his heart, so many times, and is somehow still a world away from it. As though there are not nine realms, but ten, and the tenth serves as an impassable wall between them. She isn’t sure if this is simply his way, having lived a life of secrets and intrigue… Or if he is guarding her from something darker, deeper. Something dangerous. 

“You speak of me so strangely,” she replies. “As though I am the great wolf Fenrir, heralding Ragnarok.”

His nostrils flare at her words, almost imperceptibly, and she thinks for a moment the Basim spun from shadow will emerge again. But he only lifts his head from where it rests, shaking it, and opens his eyes.

“My sense of doom is one I have placed upon myself. Each time I return to your arms, I plant another seed of my self-betrayal. They grow into trees so tall they blot out the sky. There are many; so thick and numerous I can no longer see through their branches. Cannot find my way back to the safety of the barren ground I once stood upon.” 

“I must be a witch-woman, possessing of dark seidr, to affect you so.” She is unsure of what he wants from her, or why he speaks such words. He is as shifting and unpredictable as ever.

“Don’t you see, Eivor?” He reaches out, then, daring to graze the line of her jaw with delicate fingers. “You inspired a dream of new life within me, and it terrifies me.”

The knife lodged in her heart twists even deeper.

“What is this, Basim?” She asks. The cords within her throat strain like too-tight bindings. “You draw me closer and in the same breath you push me from you. Freyja’s breath, I cannot bear this. Do you mean to stay, or do you mean to go? What would you have of me?”

“I cannot stay. I have so little ground left to stand on. I fear one more seed, one more tree taking root, will be the end of everything.”

It is not the answer she expected. Not the one she hoped for. Her heart sinks to the bottom of the sea, and she follows it all the long way down. Let Jormungandr take them both, his coils squeezing the life out of her. It would be a quicker agony.

“Do you mean to leave Ravensthorpe, then, or only my bed?”

“Norway will be an end of many things,” he tells her. “When you return from your journey, I will be gone, and trouble you no further. This is how it must be.”

“Yes,” she acknowledges softly. “It is as you say. This is a farewell, then. You have followed me through this forest not to press kisses to my cheek, but to free yourself of the darkness I cast over you.”

So many times he has warned her from this path. From that night beneath the moonlit grove until now, he has cautioned her. Reminded her that all roads, however long, wind to their eventual end. She has been a fool to continue down this one. Willful and stubborn, hand cast over her eyes that she might not see where it leads. She has deceived herself, and knows this. It is her burden to bear alone, much the same as the weight of a corpse upon her shoulders. A dead and lifeless thing she carries, staggers beneath, insistent in her hope there is life remaining in the withered lungs.

She sucks in a long, shuddering breath. It is useless to fight against fate. She knows this. All that unfolds is meant to be so; woven by the Nornir on the hour of her birth. She was never meant to have this, to have him. For months she has indulged the fantasy of him, and now she must face the strands that speak for her. She lifts her eyes to meet his one final time. The river Gjoll runs between them, he on one shore and she on another. Neither of them would survive the current, should they cross. 

And yet, a rope appears. Woven from the blue of the sky in her eyes and the deep amber of his own. Twisted through its length is the golden thread of all their yearning and loneliness and things unspoken. It spans the great distance, glimmering, trembling with tension. It pulls taut between them, jerking them forward, until his lips are on hers and her hands are cradling the base of his skull, and the horse is shying away from the sudden tumult. The forest about them fades to fog, the grass beneath their feet turning to the dark waters of Helheim. They are damned to this abyss, helpless in the grip of such a current. 

He has never touched her with such gentleness. There is no trace of his darker half. Only the man would call her a goddess of moonlight. Who kissed the inside of her thigh and held her to his chest as though there were no greater treasure he might find. She crumples, folds in on herself, within his arms. They sink to their knees, both knowing they are lost. Accepting it, savoring it. It is here, she tangled amidst a bed of wildflowers and he wearing a crown of sunlight, that he brings her only pleasure. There is no cruelty, no knife’s edge to walk upon. There is no bitterness in his heart or envy in his hands. He speaks to her with only his body, his heart. Every kiss, 

_I love you_

every brush of fingertips, 

_I love you_

every movement of his body against hers says only one thing

_I love you_

  
  


A song only she might hear, sweet as honey and clear as a lark’s chiming notes

_I love you_

He does not need to say the words, and she would not ask it of him. She knows it is beyond what he can give. She accepts every kiss with gratitude, soaking them up with the joy of parched earth meeting the rain. Taking it, holding it within herself, that the memory of it might remain in the depths of her roots and the rings of her trunk. A time when drought was banished from her heart.

“This is the last time,” she murmurs into the warmth of his neck, where she need not meet his eyes.

The hand cradling her head only presses her to him tighter, as waves of pleasure lap at the underside of her skin.

“I know,” he answers.

He kisses the top of her head as she reaches her end, and though her body is a thousand leagues from her and her heart remains at the bottom of the sea, she vows she will never forget the warmth and the pressure and tenderness of it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sadness warning for the events ahead. If you want to leave off where everyone is emotionally in one piece, I totally understand.  
> \-----------------

She has not felt peace such as this since the time before Kjotve’s death. Such… quiet. Such solitude. Not even the world of dreams is this silent and still. There is no voice ringing in her ears, testing her resolve. No words twisting her about with gnarled and greedy fingers. The voice of the all-father, a constant plague upon her spirit, is gone. No longer will he seek to take what does not belong to him. She is herself. She is free.

Cold stone beneath her palms returns her thoughts to the present.  _ The strange temple. Foreign words falling from Sigurd’s lips. The tree of life. Golden fields, soaked with the blood. Sigurd’s arm, lying in the grass beside him, severed at the joint just as it was in the gloom of the Canterbury Sanctum.  _

_ Sigurd. _

She stumbles to her feet, clumsy, ungainly. She feels as though she has slept for a full moon-cycle, muscle and bone aching from misuse. Sigurd is gone from the branch that held him. Only Svala remains, dangling limply from the tree. Revulsion coils in Eivor’s stomach. Svala would rather choose an eternity of falsehood, to accepting her mortality with grace.

“Sigurd?” She calls. Her voice echoes off the high walls, the unseen ceiling of this strange vault. “Are you with me?”

“It was  _ you,”  _ a voice bellows at her back. “All this time.  _ You. _ The hanged one. The dreaded Havi. The would-be bringer of my doom.”

Without turning, she knows it. She has heard it raised in anger, lowered in sorrow. It is the same voice that has whispered tender things in her ear, shaped words that gleamed and glittered like diamonds against her skin.  _ He shouldn’t be here,  _ she tells herself.  _ It must be another.  _ But even as she turns, before her eyes fall on him, she knows it can be no other. Basim holds Sigurd tightly against him, a blade pressed to his throat. Until this moment, she has never seen him angry. Not truly. She thought she had that night in the longhouse, when he came to her in a flurry of malcontent and jealousy. But this is something far deeper, something long buried only now rising to the surface. He burns with new emotion, and it is the furthest thing from love it could be. He…  _ hates  _ her. 

“Eivor, be careful,” Sigurd warns. “Madness has taken him.”

“You cannot begin to know the meaning of true madness,” Basim snarls. “But you will, for the Mad One walks the earth again.”

“What is this?” She asks, eyes traveling from Basim’s furious glare to the knife he holds. There is a fine bead of Sigurd’s blood welling out in response to the pressure of it. “Please… Stay your hand. Do not harm him. He has suffered enough.”

“You would ask  _ me, _ above all others, for mercy?” His laugh is hard, brittle, shattering in the frigid air between them. “Mercy you never saw fit to afford my son?”

Something clicks into place. A terrible realization. She holds all the answers to this mysterious turn of his heart. She knows the rage in his eyes, the pain in his voice - for she has heard it, seen it, before. She has looked him in the face through Odin’s eyes. Not as lovers, not as equals... but something else. A once-trusted mentor. A friend. A man twisted by suspicion and fear and disdain until there was nothing left but destruction. Only mutual hatred, between a tyrant and a grieving father.

A son, taken from him for no other reason than the misfortune of his birth. The betrayal a catalyst, severing all bonds of friendship they once shared.

The woman lost to him. Tall and beautiful and strange. The mother of his children.

_ All my life, I was surrounded by false friends. By those who named me brother, but in the same breath would see all I had stripped away. They did not care for me. They cared only for the mask I wore. A mask they all wore, with gladness in their hearts. _

_ Loki. _

She does not speak his name. Cannot speak his name. She is unsure if the man who stands before her, hatred flaring in his eyes, is Loki… Or Basim. Or both. Split, as Sigurd is. Two hugr dwelling within one body. An unending twilight she nearly dwelt in herself, until she wrested her fate from the all-father’s desperate grasping.

She does not know which man has shared her bed all these past months. Which one stands before her, holding her heart in his open palm, fingers curling about it as he slowly crushes it? Perhaps both. For all the moments of gentleness and tenderness she has found with him, there have been as many moments of uncertainty. Flashes of anger, self-loathing. A capacity for cruelty. There was a reluctance in every touch, as though she is water and he is oil, and they were never meant to meld. He never wanted her, never wanted this. She only pulled at him, whittled at his resolve like softened wood, until he bent beneath the force of her wind.

She is not so different from the all-father, then, for he never allowed the wishes of others to stand in his way. There was only what  _ he _ wanted. Nothing else mattered. The realization is sand in her mouth and throat, choking her. She remembers his words of warning, when he must have believed Sigurd to be the Mad One. Words meant to caution her, without realizing they were in truth describing her.

_ You do not know him as I do, Eivor. He would sell you to a slaver to buy himself a loaf of bread. That is what you are to him. A means to his ends. It has always been so. _

She walks slowly towards him, hands spread wide in a display of supplication. Her heart beats frantically in her throat, sudden desperation writhing in her belly. He does not know. Cannot see that for the first time in several winters, she belongs to herself. Whatever he saw in this place, within the false Valhalla, it was only a glimpse of the truth.

“Look at me, Basim.” She refuses to speak his true name. She cannot admit it to herself, not truly… and some part of her hopes Basim is still in there. That it is he who she has grown to love, and not the ghost of ancient enmity. “See me. Know me. I am no god. There are no whispers in my mind save my own.”

“Yes, come closer, Eivor,” he seethes. “Let me get a good look at you.”

She stops ten paces away, reluctant to move closer. Not when he holds the knife so tightly against Sigurd’s throat.

“What a cruel trick this is,” he laughs, and it is as cold as the depths of a frozen sea. “For my enemy to be so enshrouded in such warmth and beauty. You are nothing like him. You are gentler, kinder. Far too honorable. Whereas he…” He tightens his grip on Sigurd, giving him a shake, “bore all the similarities to an old friend. I thought him to be another. But when I opened his mind to possibilities of grandeur…of glory, and power, and knowledge... when I saw how  _ greedy  _ he was for it… my conviction wavered. And after he was returned to us, when I saw how he treated you, kicking you like a dog… I was almost  _ sure.  _ The cruelty of it was so familiar. So very like  _ him. _ But I could not strike. Not without knowing beyond any shadow of doubt that when I sunk my blade into him, it would be the Mad One who felt it. The Mad One who gazed upon me, and knew me, and saw my vengeance realized at last.”

He shakes his head, the movement one of a dog dislodging something from its ear.

“For too long, I stared at the sun. It blinded me to the truth. That it was you. It was  _ you _ I wanted all along.”

  
  


_ How can I see the sky, when the sun is so bright it blinds me? _

  
  


“It does not need to be this way,” she says softly. “Let him go. We can return to England together, all things forgiven. Friends, as we were before this strange place and these dark and frozen shores broke our bond.”

“It was already broken.” The words wrench from him, filled with the pain he is unable, unwilling, unable to let go of. “You widowed my destiny, Wolf-Kissed. You broke all my hopes.”

Her eyes lock on Sigurd’s. She sees a lifetime lived within them. She has loved him, from the time she was old enough to walk or form thought, until now. A love that shifted from adoration, to admiration, to respect, to the sort of love a woman might feel for a man. A love that has been broken, shattered, dashed upon the ground by the hands of those with little regard for his suffering. Fulke, Basim, using him to their own mad ends. It is a love she is not certain will ever recover, but even if it never does… She is not ready to let him go. Not when she has only just seen a flicker of his old self again. Though she has cast Odin from her mind, she is no less divided. A stone, cracked in two. One half unable to stop loving what is lost, and another desperately in love with what she cannot have. 

“And you would break mine,” she answers, voice shaking. “Though I have never wronged you, neither in deed nor within my heart.”

It is brief, only a flicker, a whisper of a moment - but something softens in his eyes. She sees it break through the wariness and anger, sunlight shining through a break in clouds. And then it is gone, so quickly she wonders if she imagined it.

“Enough,” Basim roars, throwing Sigurd aside. She hears the sharp  _ crack  _ of his skull striking against stone. He stays where he has fallen, and does not get up again. “Come save your crippled prince of dead ravens, then.”

He turns and runs, disappearing amongst the high pillars of stone beyond. She rushes to Sigurd first, kneeling at his side. She breathes a sigh of relief when she finds he yet breathes, though there is a gash seeping blood on the back of his head. Her fingers come away crimson, and she cradles his face in her hand for a brief moment, fingertips leaving streaks where they touch his skin.

“I will return,” she whispers. “I promise.”

She does not see Basim when she enters the circle of standing stones. She moves warily among them, axe raised. She would pray to the gods that she not be made to use it, but finds herself smothering a sudden and hysterical laugh at the irony in the thought. There are no gods, no Valhalla. She does not understand the strange seidr here, but it has bound them all tightly in its bloodied threads of fate. The footfall of soft boots reaches her ears. Close, just overhead. Instinctively, she steps back - lifting her axe. He plummets from a height above her, his terrible curved sword crashing down on her. It clangs against the haft of her axe, the force from the blow vibrating up her arm. Reverberating steel rings in her ears. She pivots away from him, dancing back several steps.

“Basim, stop this madness. I am not who you seek.”

_ “Liar,” _ he rages, pursuing her. “You are in there, I know you are, hiding behind a shield of flesh and bone. I will draw you out, and you will suffer. A  _ thousand times _ what I suffered.”

She lifts both axes this time, crossing them, trapping his blade between them when it arcs down once more. He drives the blade on with all his might, teeth bared in a rictus of fury. The blade inches closer to her face, but she does not fear it. She fears only the grief-maddened eyes behind it.

“Look at me,” she pleads again, and her voice breaks with the words. “See me for who you know me to be. I am not him, nor am I the puppet of his design. I am Eivor. I am your friend.”

_ I am your lover. _

_ I am in love with you.  _

“You would say anything to trick me,” he snarls, twisting his sword free. “In the past, i might have believed you. I will never trust you again.”

Again and again he slashes at her with his sword. Were he anyone else, she might fight with all her heart and strength. But Odin spoke true when he warned of love weakening her. She feels old, feeble, broken. A toothless old woman caving beneath winter snow. It takes all the strength she has left to stand, to raise her axes and block his ferocious blows. She is mind-sick with him, as she is sick within her heart. The fever has remained all these months, continuing to poison her and sap her spirit. Her distraction and her grief leave her open, and when his boot catches her in the side of one knee, she falls. She does not reach out to catch herself, instead allowing her body to tumble onto stone with jarring force.

He is on her in an instant, a wolf on the back of a deer, teeth sinking into the soft fur at its throat. She struggles against him, pushes at him with the arm not pinned beneath his knee, but he seizes her by the wrist and slams her arm against the cold floor under her. She cries out, the skin on the backs of her knuckles splitting from the force of it.

“Show me your neck!” He demands. A hand grips her by the hair, forces her head to the side. _ “Show me!” _ He repeats again as she fights him, bucking and twisting beneath him. He is too heavy. A great stone, resting on her chest. Crushing her. She relents, going still as a rabbit in a fox’s jaws. He examines her neck, gazing at the scars left by a wolf’s teeth so many winters past. Beneath him, her chest rises and falls in rapid succession. She sucks at the air with long, harsh breaths. As though she may never breathe again. 

“The kiss of a wolf takes my prize,” he hisses, close to her ear. “Of course.”

Tears sting at her eyes, slip from their corners against her wishes. A sob rises up in her throat, escapes through her lips. It is not the pain of his grip in her hair, or the weight of him pressing her into the stone. It is the betrayal. It is his blindness. He looks at her, but does not see her. She will die here, too weak and broken in spirit to fight for her own life. Another sob follows the first, and then a third. She is unable to stop them. Her body convulses with the force of them, and she feels she is coming apart. Bones separating at the joint, tendons and tissue snapping. It is the culmination of a long unraveling of her being, that began with the first time she pressed her lips to his.

Silence reigns. There is no sound save the echoes of her distress and his own ragged exhalations. She waits for something, anything. A knife splitting her skin, or hands around her throat. Nothing comes. The grip on her hair loosens suddenly, the fingers of his hand going slack. She only lies still, eyes closed tightly in a final bid to staunch the flow of tears. She is limp, empty, hollow. There is nothing left in her.

“Look at me.” The words are suddenly gentle, as empty of fire as her body is. 

She does not answer him, only remains as she is, shuddering with her poorly suppressed grief.

“Look at me, Eivor. Open your eyes.” A hand cups her face, turns it upward once more. His thumb runs over her lower lip, rough and calloused, and she remembers a dozen other times he has made this same gesture; cradled her cheek in this way. Once, it heralded a kiss. Now, she is certain it heralds only death.

She opens her eyes.

The man who kneels over her is different, now. Not the one who would make her suffer. Not the man who would see her die. This is the Basim who found her lying on the floor of an empty farmhouse and tended to her wounds. Who brewed her healing tea and broke her fever. A man who carefully stitched her wound closed, mindful of the pain he was causing her. This is the man from the tavern, who treated her with love and tenderness and left the taste of honey and clove on her lips. This man, be it Basim or Loki, is the one her heart yearns for.

“My son...” he whispers, eyes molten. “He cannot have died in vain. His suffering cannot be wasted.”

“If you kill me,” she chokes out, “Only one will die this day. And it will not be the death you seek. No other resides in this body. He is gone, left to dwell in the darkness of Helheim alone.”

“Would that I could believe you,” he says, closing his own eyes for a moment. She feels the cold steel of a knife against her own throat, flinching as it steals to her skin without so much as a whisper. “But I cannot risk it. There may come a day when he returns, when he unlocks your mind and steps into the body kept warm for him. I must ensure that never happens. That my son’s agony does not go unpunished.”

She is shivering beneath him. He has stolen every last bit of warmth and light she ever had within her.

“Then do it,” she challenges hoarsely. “Kill me. If this is to be your fate and mine, then see it done.”

The blade bites deeper still. She holds his gaze. If he means to murder her, then she will meet him with courage.

_ “No!” _

Sigurd’s voice rings through the great cavern, and there is a whir of something. An axe, spinning through the air. Basim’s weight leaves her chest as he rolls free of her, avoiding the hurtling weapon. Gasping, she sits up. Sigurd has thrown his only weapon, and now faces Basim with no means of defense.

“Eivor, get up!” He shouts, relief flooding his features at the sight of her still breathing. “I cannot hold him off alone.”

The spell is broken. She looks from Basim, who has seen the truth of her at last and would still kill her, to Sigurd. Sigurd, who stands with his shoulders squared and his remaining hand clenched into a fist. He appears as he once did, before England stripped him of his joy and ambition. Tall, fearless, terrible… and unarmed. No matter how frightening he may look, Basim’s curved blade will cleave through him all the same. Her life is her own to sacrifice, but she will not allow Sigurd to die. Not here, in this terrible place. Not by Basim’s hand.

Basim snarls at the interruption, brandishing his sword once more.

“This brings me no joy, Justice-Bringer.” Basim circles around to face Sigurd, raising the sword high as he draws near. “You were always so kind. But you chose the wrong side then, just as you do now.”

She moves with strength returned, pulling the dagger from her belt and hurling it through the air. It strikes true, bouncing off his blade and sending the strike askew.

“He is not your prize, Basim.” she takes up her axes, one in each hand. Weapons that she so eagerly let fall from her fingers moments ago. “Come and claim me. I am  _ yours, _ after all.”

His head jerks, as though she has delivered a blow to his cheek. The words are foul in her mouth, a moment between them twisted for the purpose of its sting. Odin would be proud. The thought sends a wave of nausea through her belly.

He approaches her, Sigurd forgotten, and they clash once more. Steel rings upon steel, bone-breaking blows raining one after another. She drives him on, gaining ground with each axe swing. He is fluid and nimble, fueled by his thirst for vengeance, but she is no less dangerous. Anger numbs her heart, strengthens her resolve. She presses until they are down the steps once more, the shadows of the life-tree’s branches falling over them.

“Fight me, wolf-father,” she roars. “Earn the death you would bestow upon me.”

“I will leave you here to die,” he answers, “Like rotten fruit on a dying tree.”

From the corner of her eye, she spies movement. Sigurd, running for the orb. The same glowing orb that brought the branches down, and ushered them into Valhalla.  _ He means to activate the seidr of this place once more,  _ she realizes.  _ And leave Basim to the watchful eyes of Svala.  _ Basim does not seem to notice. His mind is fixed on her, his dark eyes glittering with renewed fury. His sword point swishes through a stray braid, and she can feel the weight of it lift, feel the strands slide over her forearm and fall to the ground. Hair he once gloried his hands in, held to his nose and breathed deeply of. She nearly misses her next parry, catching herself just in time. Her twin axes locking his sword between their joined hafts. She wrenches, twisting savagely, and his sword clatters across the platform they stand on. 

He freezes, breathing hard, allowing his hands to fall at his sides as she stills her right axe blade against the side of his neck. 

“Why stay your hand now?” He asked, his voice soft and luxurious as velvet against skin. “Here I am, a lamb ready for sacrifice to Odin. Give him what he most longs for. Give him my death.”

“He longs for nothing,” she snaps. “I spoke the truth. He is gone.” She lowers her axe, loosening her grip on both. They fall to the stone at her feet with a dull ringing.

_ One more chance. _

_ One more attempt to make him see. _

He looks from the abandoned weapons to her. When he moves again, she flinches. His treachery has left her raw, on edge. But if she does not do this, she will never truly know. The knowledge of what he feels for her will be lost to the ages, and she cannot bear it.

He shifts uneasily, hesitating in his step towards her at the unconscious reaction. 

“I do not understand you.”

Her lips curve into a smile. A shadowed thing she might have forgotten, if not for her next words.

“In this moment, I do not understand myself.” 

He closes the distance between them, then, encircling an arm around her waist and pulling her tightly against him. His other hand finds its way into her hair, drawing her face to his. He kisses her, and it is a hard and bruising and desperate gesture. There is not so much sweetness as there is fear in the pressure of his mouth, crushing her lips against her teeth. She allows her eyes to flutter closed, allows her body to melt into his. Her hands come to rest against his ribs, and she breathes in the scent of him. Musky and sweet. The salt of the sea is on his skin, the scent of clove still lingering where he rubbed its oil into his leathers. When he breaks the kiss, he does not pull away. He presses his forehead to hers, his chest heaving with emotion.

“Why?” He asks, the cracking of ice threatening to swallow them both.

“With each vow we made to end it... each time we swore it to be the last time... I knew I couldn't bear it if it was,” she answers. “Because in this world of pain and blood and battle-din, I have found stillness in you. But above all else… It is because I love you. And for that, I am ashamed. I did not intend for this to happen, but you have made it impossible for me to distance my heart.” 

“Eivor,” he breathes. “Of all the choices I have made in my life… All the secrets and lies I have told, all the betrayals I have committed in the name of greater causes… This is the only one that has brought me pain. I have been content with myself, never questioning what I must do. But you… You make me question all of it, make me worry at my convictions in the dark, unable to sleep. And for this… I am truly sorry.”

He kisses her once more, and it is gentle. Careful. An apology for the first one’s brutality as much as it is an apology for his deeds.

She hears the blade before she feels it. The soft  _ snick  _ of steel as the mechanism releases it’s hidden passenger. It is a sound she has heard many times in her travels, as countless members of the Order fell beneath her own hidden blade. The pain is next, as the blade slips between her ribs as easily as a knife carves through butter. Membrane gives way beneath its edge, tearing like a spider’s web as he drives the point deeply into her. Something vital gives way, and she cries out against his lips from the agony of it. He does not release her. He holds her closer still, a tender lover embracing his beloved. Her fingers curl in his hauberk, bunching into tight fists, as she meets his gaze.

“I cannot risk the Mad One’s return,” he whispers, so close his lips brush hers with their shaping of the words. “Any more than I can continue to betray  _ her. _ To give over one’s body is nothing, but to betray her with my heart… That is far greater a betrayal. One I will commit no longer. I must... dig my way out.”

He does not see the branch that reaches silently down to grasp him. She looks into the eyes of the man who has both loved her and betrayed her, and grants him one final smile. A slip of forgiveness, to carry with him on his long and dark journey.

“May you find lasting peace,” she answers. “And seek her out once more, in a realm far from this one.”

He goes limp as the tree seizes him, the blade pulling free of her as the branch bears him away. She falls to her knees, one hand clutching her side. Fresh tears stream down her cheeks, silent mourners, and she allows them. There is no end to the treachery that plagues her, the heartache fate would mete out. Her shoulders shake, and she falls forward. She presses her forehead, still warm from his, to the cold stone. She begs Ymir’s bones to banish the memory of his touch from her skin, presses her palms flat to the smooth surface in supplication. She screams, then. A long, drawn out howl of pure agony and rage and heartache. It ends in a quavering note, her lungs empty, and there is nothing left in its wake. No tears, no sorrow, no pain, no rage. Only emptiness, as hollow as the birds-bones that rattle where they hang in Valka’s hut. She slumps, oblivious to the ache of cold that seeps into the bones of her face and hands.

She recognizes the boots that enter her field of vision. She does not look up beyond the snow-crusted fur, the damp leather. 

Sigurd kneels beside her. He places his remaining hand between her shoulders. The firm pressure of it, the comforting circles he makes with the heel of his hand, pushes at the wall of numbness she has only just built around herself.

“I am sorry, my sweetest friend,” he murmurs. “I did not know.”

“None did,” she manages to say. “And it matters no longer. I could not reach him, in the place he chose to go.”

She shivers, both from cold and memory. Sigurd withdraws his hand, and she hears something loosen. Weight returns, but it is that of his cloak. Hesitantly, awkwardly, he pulls it over her until she is covered. Tears pool where her cheek is pressed to the frigid stone. Soon, they will be frozen. A small lake of ice in memory of where her heart lay bleeding.

He lowers himself to the floor, sitting cross-legged beside her. He is silent, his palm returning to shaping circles between her shoulders. In time, the tears cease their flow. Her breathing evens, and she pushes herself upright. His cloak slides from her shoulders, pooling around her hunched form. He makes a sound of alarm when he sees her bloodied tunic.

“You are injured,” he says, reaching out tentatively.

She shakes her head, shies away from his touch. “It is not fatal. He will not kill me so easily.”

“What can I do?” He asks.

“Take me home.” She speaks with the weariness of one bent by many winters. “There is nothing here for us, save misery.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like a monster, guys, but... there was really only one way this could end. The future needs our Isu snack.
> 
> The final chapter is a lengthy summary of Basim's thoughts/viewpoints throughout this, so stay tuned :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, friends. My thoughts on Basim's thoughts. Keep in mind this is pretty much entirely my headcanon. haha.  
> \-------------

In the beginning, all went according to plan. The blinding pain of the voluntary loss of his -  _ Basim’s _ \- finger opened a doorway. A mere crack, through which freedom shone like a slip of sunlight. A promise, that he would not be doomed to the shadows of another’s mind much longer.

Little by little, he pulled the door open wider. Whispering into the space beyond it. Questioning, suggesting, until his words began to shape and warp the resilience of his host. At first, only his fingers would fit within this gap. Just enough to find purchase on the door’s edge. Over time, he was able to fit the toe of his shoe through. Then a knee, which allowed him to lever his strength against it further. With each push for freedom, he gained bits and pieces of his host’s life. Moments where it was not Basim, but he who struck enemies down with the sharp blade at his wrist. Where it was his lips and not Basim’s that tasted roasted meats and spiced wine. He learned early on that for Basim to imbibe was to soften his own hold, making him sluggish and weak, the door closing until only a thread of light remained. 

That would not do.

He redoubled his efforts, spinning words of warning against the foulness of drink.  _ It will numb your senses,  _ he whispered.  _ Cloud your thoughts. You must be as sharp as your knife’s edge. You must be as quick and silent as the wind.  _

There was a sense of victory in Basim’s growing reluctance to touch spirits. Over time, he developed a fondness for the foods Loki preferred, and a dislike for the ones he did not. An unconscious shifting of himself as Loki took hold.

Basim made for an excellent host. Well-suited to the tasks in mind. Young enough, strong enough, formidable enough to do what must be done. No family, no home, his father dead. Penniless, with only his name to carry. No connections to overcomplicate matters. Basim joined the Hidden Ones to seek purpose, to quell the sorrow in his heart and avenge his father. In this thirst for justice, they were the same. And within the Order, Basim - and so, too, Loki - were granted access to an untold wealth of knowledge. Secrets and rumors fell from lips to meet his ears, as sweet as the perfume of flowers. Here, in this hot and dry land, he may utilize the reach of the Hidden Ones to seek his ends. These humans had no proper network, but he found the lattice of intrigue suitable enough. He knew he had only as long as Basim’s human body had life to seek out the knowledge he required. To find his way back to  _ her.  _ His beloved, who waited for him in a realm without sensation or such strictures of time.

The rage and grief and despair that plagued his host fueled his own, and soon they mingled into an ugly inferno. A tangle of two vines, so twisted they seemed as one. Over time, it was this that opened the door completely. The final step over such a threshold came with the death of the man who had stolen Basim’s father’s legacy and good name. A member of the Order of Ancients, gift-wrapped for his host’s revenge. It was Basim who struck the killing blow from the shadows, and in the bloom of violent satisfaction within his chest, it was Loki who rose from a crouch over the dead man. Loki, who wiped the hidden blade on the fine robes of the corpse. Loki, who slipped into Basim’s skin as neatly as a silken shroud, seizing complete control at long last.

For years, he searched for news or rumor of the sages. He rose in rank and capability among the Hidden Ones, taking on apprentices and training them in the art of death. And then, at last, the sun broke through the clouds. With Ammon’s death came news of the viking warrior who slew him. A man reported to have a strange mark upon the right side of his neck. It wasn’t until he was alone again that Loki allowed himself to breathe. To look up at the night sky and close his eyes and whisper,

_ Soon, my love. With every passing moment, I grow closer to you. _

He wondered which of his old enemies he would find in Constantinople. If it would be too much to hope for that the Mad One would tumble into his waiting hands, after all this time. He was uncertain, when he first spied the viking warrior who stood a full head above all others. Tall, dangerous, with a greatsword strapped to his back. There was a sense of familiarity upon their meeting, to be sure. Something in the bright blue eyes that Loki recognized, but could not quite put his finger on. Tyr, he thought. It would be the most fitting. A man both clear-minded and adept at war. Who might balance a scale and cleave a head from one’s shoulders with equal objectivity. There was some similarity in appearance; though it resided mainly in the eyes. Sigurd bore a far greater height, the span of his shoulders and red-gold hair significantly different. Where Tyr was smooth of face, Sigurd had a rough beard and tattoos.

_ I can use this, use him,  _ he told himself as he wooed the man who called himself Sigurd Styrbjornsson with tales of treasure and unimaginable secrets.  _ He will lead me to the others, to the Mad One, wherever he may lurk. To the revenge I will not be denied. _

He cannot define where, exactly, things began to go wrong. Where he lost sight of his original aims. He never intended to grow close to the woman Sigurd called  _ sister.  _ Never expected to respect her. A human, too small of mind to see beyond the simplicity of her life. Who clung to her belief in concepts such as destiny and fate, as though her decisions were not her own. He saw her more clearly, in the early days. An obstacle between himself and his goal. Fiercely protective of Sigurd, stubbornly planting her feet in every doorway he would pass through. Beneath her piercing gaze, something fluttered awake in the back of his mind. A presence he had thought vanquished.

And so he did what he has always done best. He twisted Sigurd’s mind. It began with the barest of whispers. He plucked at the man’s harpstrings of destiny and glory and riches, pressed upon Sigurd’s desire to be great, his name never forgotten. The Viking yearning for mighty sagas and warrior’s deaths only made it easier for him to slip into Sigurd’s mind; as easily as one might slip into a heated spring. Styrbjorn’s submission to Harald’s rule only aided Loki’s cause, for with the loss of his birthright, Sigurd grew even easier to manipulate.

Except… for her. Each time Sigurd’s temper rose, every time he dwelled on his desperation for too long, she was there to calm his fire. To give him direction once more. Loki would admire their closeness, their bond… if not for how incredibly inconvenient it was. He would never find the Mad One, not with such a bond keeping Sigurd firmly planted in a state of reason. And so, with the sharp shears of his tongue, Loki began to cut the strings of their bond one by one. Some resisted his edge. Some went easily, without complaint, their fraying ends lost to dark words and suspicious thoughts. Through it all, she was unfaltering, her faith in him unbending. But Sigurd went along as easily as a blindfolded horse.

But Sigurd proved to be unpredictable. Volatile. Given to fits of rage and delusions of grandeur. The Isu within him clawing free, revealing his true nature. With each passing day on England’s shores, Loki began to doubt himself. To doubt his original assertion of Sigurd’s identity. He had seen all this before. The quick temper, the desperate need for power beyond what was deserved. The selfishness and greed. A willingness to agree to anything, no sacrifice too great, if it suited personal gain. Sigurd was becoming a man who would let nothing get in his way, and it was for this that Loki began to wonder. He watched Sigurd tear into Eivor with fury, his words severing all the strings Loki had been unable to. He watched Eivor’s eyes grow dark, her heart breaking beneath the relentless blows, and found… he was not glad for it. In a ludicrous turn of events, he felt almost guilty for his handiwork, however successful it had been.

And then his prize, his guide to all that mattered, was taken from him. It was over the loss of Sigurd that he found himself grow closer to her. He told himself it would only further his cause. That as her  _ friend,  _ he might use her to his ends as well. He would whisper in her ear as he had in Sigurd’s, and she would aid him in driving the knife of betrayal home. Separated from his only remaining ally, alone in the world, Sigurd’s mind would be a wellspring from which Loki could pluck anything he needed. 

But it was she who drove a knife home. She, who plunged it into his chest and twisted it so deeply his ribs cracked beneath the force of it.

He found himself speaking far more truths than he had ever intended to. He found himself sharing secrets that were  _ his,  _ in addition to tales plucked from his host’s life. Secrets he wove carefully amidst Basim’s truths, in a tapestry she might look upon and not see the pieces of Loki within. A spilling of words he seemed incapable of controlling. He tried to tell himself it was part of his plan. That it was only to grow closer to her, to achieve his ends, to... quell the human yearnings of his host. Surely it was merely Basim’s ghost, haunting him still, that was the reason for the ache in his chest when he looked at her.

On a dark and cold night, they sat beside a fire and he told her of his son. The words fell from his lips as though he did not speak them. As though they left him of their own accord, and he could do nothing to stop them. It was the first time he had spoken of Fenrir to anyone, and he was stunned at his own betrayal of himself. Moreso at the fact it felt… good to share it, to spill the poison he had carried so long in his heart. She listened as he spoke, sympathy in her frost-bright eyes, and he felt  _ comforted.  _ As though they were the oldest of friends, and had shared similar words many times.

And then… she was crawling towards him, on her hands and knees, a position that was both vulnerable and somehow submissive. And there was a fire in her eyes that melted the frost within them, and burned away at the pervasive cold ever-lingering in his gut. The firelight kissed the edges of her, as the moon above cast her in its silver light. A creature of both sun and shadow. A goddess of moonlight. For a moment, he welcomed it. His eyes fell to her parted lips, and he did not shy away. He  _ wanted  _ it, as one might want food after a week lived without. She kissed him, and for the longest of breaths he allowed it. No. It was more than that. He  _ wallowed _ in it, yearned for more, considered burying his hands amidst her braids and  _ taking her. _ It was Basim who pulled him away. Basim, beating at the door of the room Loki once dwelt in. Basim, who  _ loved  _ Eivor. Who raged at his imprisonment and reminded Loki of the truth of things. Of what he had lost, and must find once more.

_ Angrboda.  _

_ Mother of his children. _

_ His beating heart and the breath in his lungs. _

_ Angrboda, waiting for him, trapped in a fathomless and timeless place. _

-

Like the first unraveling thread of many more to follow, the kiss began to undo him. In sleep, Basim returned, taking control once more... His desires poisoning them both. His dreams were of Eivor, of the heat of her lips pressed to his. Thoughts of how warm and sleek her body would be beneath his hands. And Loki, peering through the crack of his old prison, found himself unable to look away from the images. From the thoughts that heated his blood, Basim’s blood. With each dream, with each curious and searching glance from her, Basim regained some footing. It was as the early days once more, control shifting, though Loki maintained much of his hold. He had come too far to allow a human woman to distract him.

He was fascinated by the change in Sigurd upon his rescue. The viking he had met in Constantinople was… gone. There was no reasoning in his eyes, no calm and easy manner remaining. He was angry, harsh, filled with hate. He watched Sigurd roar at her, watched the light in her eyes dim further, and wondered some more. 

_ Could I have been wrong, all this time? It is he who stands before me, flecking Eivor’s face with the spittle of his rage?  _

The Tyr of his memories would never speak or act thusly. It sowed a seed of disquiet in him. He took to watching Sigurd from the shadows, contemplating his every move or mannerism. Almost… desperate for confirmation. Time and again, Sigurd lashed out at all those who would aid him or care for him. He treated his wife with viciousness and cruelty, just as he did Eivor. And was the Mad One not willing to trade his own wife for the promise of safety? Did he not demand a sacrifice of blood from Tyr, so bent was he on his own interests? His own obsessions? Sigurd was willing enough to give Eivor over to Aelfred. That had been a stroke of genius. A severing of the strongest cord between them. She saw the madness in Sigurd’s eyes, saw the betrayal written there... And Loki, who graciously offered himself up at the last moment, only once the damage had been done.

He grew almost certain over the months following Sigurd’s rescue. Almost sure. All the hate and anger, a constant companion residing in his breast, rose up in him. Urged him to kill the man who took Fenrir from him. But almost was not enough. He would not strike until he was  _ sure. _ To kill his only link and be wrong would cost him years of effort and searching. And so he waited for Sigurd to finish cracking. To break apart. To assume his true mantle. He was alone, friendless, isolated… and for a while, it was enough. If it was indeed the Mad One who split Sigurd’s mind, Loki would gladly let him suffer the indignity of a broken body and the cold eyes of people who once adored him.

The dreams continued, haunting him in the hours he was awake as often as they did when he slept. He could not lie to himself and claim it was Basim who met her beneath the trees that night. Basim was safely locked away when Loki pressed the blade to her throat, desire stirring in him at the way she felt against him. His control was complete when he allowed his hands to roam over her body, confirming what he and his host had always known lay beneath her tunic. Soft slopes, hard planes of muscle, lean limbs and that  _ glorious _ braided hair, as though someone had spilled midnight down her back. It was not Basim who thrust into her, who enjoyed feeling her tremble for him. No. It was he, Loki, too entrenched in his lust and yearning to be anything other than shameful. A betrayer to his people, to Angrboda. To himself. His self-loathing spurred him on until he felt himself spill within her, revulsion and all-encompassing lust warring within his chest for equal footing.

Even as they parted, he knew it would not be the last time. He hated himself for the knowing. Hated himself for his disgusting weakness, his vulnerability. He tried to recover himself in the darkness of his quarters. He told himself it was only a tactic. That he could still use this to his advantage. That someday, the memory of this liaison would be something he might use to unlock the secrets of Sigurd’s mind. More pain, to slip between Sigurd’s ribs. The thoughts brought little comfort to him. He could smell her on his skin, feel her against him, remember what it felt like to have her convulse and shudder within his grip.

-

He failed to pull away, time and again. With every kiss, every coupling, he blamed Basim. Sometimes, in moments of abject self-loathing, he would let Basim take control. He would tell himself it was not a true betrayal, not if it was Basim who held her. He knew the falsehood of it then, just as he does now. He held her within his arms just as Basim did, and the tenderness in his host only added stones to the bottom of a ship hardly afloat. 

She bound him in unbreakable chains, shackling him to her without any hope of escape. He considered killing her, the day he found her lying on the floor, fevered and bloodied. It would make everything so much easier. Her death would not only destroy what remained of Basim’s stubborn grip on himself, but also free him of his own ties to her. Of his... _feelings_ for her. He crouched beside her, analyzing her flushed skin and the ragged, swollen wound in her back, and curled his hand into a fist. One quick strike, and it would be over. The embodiment of all his weakness and torment would be no more. None would ever find out what happened to her. He could have claimed ignorance, or blamed Aelfred’s men. He could have left her to rot in a house already stinking of decay, riding off and leaving the carrion birds to scatter her bones. And yet… his arm would not move. The blade would not deploy. 

_ No,  _ a small voice begged. Basim, rising to the surface. A corpse who would not sink.  _ Please. You love her as I do. You cannot lie to me, for I know all. See all. Your thoughts are my thoughts. _

For once, he didn’t push Basim back down. Did not silence him. He found he did not have the strength. Not to fight his host, and not to kill her. Whatever lies he might have told in this life, this was one he would never be able to make himself believe. Basim’s words were true. He  _ did _ love her. A betrayal too far, and somehow inevitable. He could not kill the woman who brought peace to his spirit and drew poetry from his lips. Who reminded him of what it felt to  _ be _ loved, after so much darkness. He considered giving Basim control. Of allowing his fragmented host to care for her, and in doing so, distancing himself. Retreating to somewhere safe. Instead, it was he who lifted her from where she lay. It was he who tended to her wound and brewed a tea that would banish both the infection and the fever. If not for Basim’s shared knowledge of such things, it would not have been possible to save her. In this, they were one. Equal in their concern for her. Equal in their desperation to save her.

She murmured his name in her haze of fever. She called for him, reached out to an image only she could see. Pleading and yearning, fingers pulling at the fabric of his tunic.

_ Wake up, habibata,  _ he whispered as he smoothed the sweaty hair from her brow. A term of adoration not spoken by Basim, but himself… though the boundary was less than clear.  _ You must wake.  _

When her fever broke and lucidity returned, she asked after Angrboda. About the woman who yet held his heart. He feigned reluctance, but in truth… speaking of what he has lost, sharing such things with her, felt natural. Once more, a sense of familiarity. Of trust. It was as though they were old friends, as though… He could trust her with everything. Even in light of the pain his words must have caused her, she was empathetic. Gentle. She spoke words of comfort and kindness. Kindness he did not deserve, did not expect. The love he had only just allowed himself to acknowledge twisted, tightened, low in his gut. Knotted and unyielding, far beyond untangling.

He had not believed there to be any space left within him for such a thing. All the dark recesses of his soul were filled with hate. And she, a pinprick of light in all that darkness, would find a corner of his heart to nestle within.

He knew their bond, this insistent love, could not be allowed to grow. It could never be anything but temporary pain for either of them. He had so much to do. So much to complete. Years of seething in this limbo. Of slowly wresting control over this body. All the nights of remembering his son’s fate, of seeing the pain in his eyes. Of holding Angrboda to him as she wept. All their suffering, all his careful maneuvering, could not be for nothing. He could not waste this chance at revenge. At bringing his family together again.

Loving her would only make his mission harder. He knew this. He understood he was treading a path on which he would find no joyous end. He simply could not stop his feet from moving down it. He, a puppet… and she, his master.

-

Something snapped within him when he watched the exchange between her and Sigurd, facing each other with the brook running between them. He saw the yearning in her eyes, the _willingness_ to forgive him despite herself, and it infuriated him. His self-betrayal over these past months meant nothing to her. She would choose a broken and bent and crumbling creature over _him._ She would cast him aside as easily as a dirty cloak. He curled his fists in anger, ground his teeth, furious with himself for allowing himself to feel anything for her but contempt. Again, she stood in a doorway, blocking him from stepping through. Barring his way from seeing Sigurd - and the Mad One - to his end.

He took his revenge on her flesh. He made her ache as he ached, burn as he burned. He laid his claim to her even though he knew she was not his to keep. He told himself it was a victory. That it was he who was the master of this design, and not her. That she was helpless and weak and he was far stronger and more clever than she. 

A victory with only a hollow ring, for she gave herself willingly despite his anger. She accepted his punishing embrace, his iron grip, his cruelty, with only openness and love in her eyes. It made him hate her, even as he felt himself drowning in the torrent of emotion she woke in him. When he left her, lying amongst her furs looking bruised and broken and sorrowful and aching… he felt no joy. No sense of accomplishment or pride. He felt ashamed. Self-loathing of a different nature. Not one borne of the sense of debasement he once felt for craving a human woman’s touch, but of the knowledge that he had wronged someone with a pure heart. Who held none of the cruel and hideous traits he kept within his own breast. 

She gave herself to him, submitted to him, out of  _ love. _ A thought that galled him, chafed at him, tormented him like stiff and sweaty leathers. It left him raw, bleeding, as though it were he with an arrow embedded in his flesh. In his shame, he took his leave of Ravensthorpe. He could not bear to see her face or to meet her eyes. He would not stay away long. Only long enough to distance himself from the ugly reflection he had been made to look upon. He had travel arrangements to make. Coins to press into palms. Sigurd was returning to the place it all began, and he would follow. He would see the Mad One emerge at last, and bring this long enmity to its end.

_Please stay here,_ he begged her silently as he rode away. _Stay among your people._ _Do not stand in this doorway. Do not block me from this final thing. I do not know if I could bear to move you._

She did not see him go. She was not looking for him. She sat at the edge of the dock, legs folded under herself, lost in thought. The sadness in her eyes was placed there by him, another casualty in a long list of his atrocities.

-

He had been a fool to allow himself to slip so far down the well of undoing. To let himself feel for her, touch her, hold her face in his hands and kiss her simply because it lessened the ache of living. He had lost his control, become far too much like the fading memory of his human host. It had weakened him, blinded him, left him stumbling like a child in the dark.  _ She  _ blinded him, with her eyes like a storm-filled sky and her dark tresses that shone as her raven’s wing feathers did. Her gentleness, her kindness, her rigid sense of honor was as effective as a cloth pulled down over his eyes. He stood still as she placed it, hands at his side. He welcomed it, welcomed her. He let her wrap herself about his heart like a hungry serpent, squeezing the blood from it. He allowed it and he enjoyed it. Enjoyed  _ her.  _

How could he see the truth, when she was everything the Mad One was not? In all the ways his oldest enemy was loathsome, mercenary, a hate-filled tyrant… She was not. She had the heart of a warrior, but also one of a poet. There was a sweetness to her like honey - wild and unforgettable on his tongue, seeping into bones and warming him from within. It was a deception so thorough, so complete, he would have admired it if not for the fury it evoked in him. How close he had come to failure. He had expected to come here and find the truth he sought in Sigurd’s eyes. To sink his blade into the Mad One’s heart and glory in the stilling of it. He expected she might get in his way, though he hoped she would see. Would understand. Perhaps she would forgive him, as she forgave him in the meadow. 

But this… to learn the woman he had lain with, held to his breast, crooned sweet words to… The woman he had loved despite himself… was the Mad One was a revelation so horrifying he could not comprehend it at first. When he disengaged from the simulation, he could hardly breathe. He fell to his knees on the stone floor and stared at his hands. Hands that had slid over her damp skin, entrenched themselves in her hair. Hands that had smoothed her brow, traced the line of her lips, slipped inside her and brought his name to her lips. 

_ No. Not his name. Another’s name.  _

Pieces clicked into place like an ornate puzzle box solved at last. The familiarity he had felt around her, the ease with which words flowed. The sense of safety and security she evoked in him… that was the way of things long ago, when he and Odin were like brothers. When he trusted Odin implicitly, above all reason, until his secrets began to drive a wedge between them. Until Odin took his son from him,  _ tortured _ him, imprisoned him. Until every waking thought Loki had was of seeing the Mad One destroyed. Hurting him as terribly as he and Angrboda had been hurt. Killing Baldur had not been enough. It was a thimble of water in the face of an unquenchable thirst.

It was not the revenge he wanted. Not the vengeance he dreamed of night after night, awash in the pain of memory. He saw none of the Mad One in her. Not in all the time he knew her, and not as they faced each other in the ruins of his people. It didn’t matter. He had come too close to losing everything. To surrendering himself to her. To allowing remembrances of her lips and hands and hair and the feeling of being  _ held  _ tear him apart. And so he steeled himself to her, hardening his heart to all the things they had shared. All the feelings he had allowed to press at the edges of himself. Her death would not bring him satisfaction, but it would bring him some peace. The knowledge that he would never need worry about the Mad One rising again. It would be finished, with her death. And perhaps he would be finished with it.

To the bitter and blood-soaked end, she loved him. A gift of which he had never felt so unworthy. He could not understand it. Even as his blade slashed through the air, even as he raged against her, she was steadfast. Honorable. Kind. She stayed her blade when she might have cut him down, still hoping to change his mind. To change him.

So he kissed her. It was a way of speaking all the things he couldn’t. Words he had only managed to contain in his mad descent into her arms. Words he had considered murmuring into her ear, that last time in the sun-drenched glade. A kiss that was a confession. A bargain. A plea. An apology. A severing. A farewell.

_ You can’t, _ Basim begged through the closed door upon seeing his intentions. _ You won’t. Not her. Please. _

_ But I can, _ was his answer as his blade slipped between her ribs.  _ And I must.  _

Her gasp of pain and surprise broke the kiss, and with the realization of his final and most true of betrayals in her eyes, the last of Basim was extinguished. A candle, flickering, guttering out.

A world without light, without life, returned to him.

-

  
  


He sees her in his dreams, always. And in the waking hours, she haunts him still. He cannot look to the sky without remembering her eyes; two clouded rings of frozen water. More than their color, it is the memory of the way they made him feel. The way she looked at him, as though he were a special part of her. As though he  _ mattered. _ A guileless affectation that claws at him. 

He cannot bear the warmth of the sun on his skin, for it reminds him of what it felt to hold her against him. To feel the heat of her body pressed close to his.

He is himself. He is in control. Now shadows of his host linger, not anymore. And despite it… He still feels torn. As though two halves of a whole are pulling against each other, threatening to tear him apart.

She comes to him in visions. He tells himself it is the bleeding effect. That she is not truly there. That it is not a ghost that sits across from him, firelight dancing in her eyes as it did a lifetime ago. Like the night she placed her hands on his knees, an unasked question in her eyes, and kissed him.

It’s the bleeding effect.

It has to be.

And yet... somehow, he doubts it. It is too real, too tangible. He can see the fine hairs on the backs of her fingers. See the glimmer of moisture at the corners of her eyes. He watches a lock of hair darker than obsidian, forever rebellious, fall over her forehead at the behest of the shifting breeze about them. Her eyes meet his and her lips part, as though to say something. As though to speak his name, or speak of yearning. As though they would kiss him one last time. But she does not move from where she is seated, and the mouth he has kissed a hundred - or perhaps a thousand - times only spreads into a smile. A slow and soft and tender thing. A token of forgiveness, that pierces his heart like the hidden blade itself.

A gift, of which he has never felt more unworthy. 


End file.
